


The Auror Method

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Con Artists, Humor, M/M, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco has constructed the perfect cover for his activities as a con-man specializing in thefts from a distance: Draco Malfoy, the redeemed Death Eater and Recluse of Malfoy Manor. But now there’s evidence that some people are onto him, and as a consequence of the death threats issued to him, he gets an assigned Auror guard. Maybe Harry Potter, their leader, could be a problem when it comes to Draco’s latest con. Although how could he, when he’s getting all distracted by Draco’s fluttering eyelashes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Exploding Scroll

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mostly humorous story that will probably be between twelve and fifteen chapters.

The owl posed in the middle of the large oak table that Draco had chosen as a decoration for this particular room of the Manor, its wings spreading further and further as if it wanted Draco to see the walls and windows of the Manor only through its feathers. It was a beautiful bird, Draco thought, probably the most beautiful he had ever seen. The only color other than black on it were in its gleaming golden eyes, which were so startling that Draco might have used the owl simply to surprise visitors to the Manor if he owned it. And then it lifted its foot, and the scroll that was bound around it showed scarlet, startling.  
  
Draco nodded in approval as he reached out to retrieve the scroll. “Whoever owns you has a fitting sense of drama,” he muttered. “That might almost prompt me to listen to him.”  
  
The owl gave him a single, steady gaze, then leaped off the table and flew over to the perch that Draco kept in a corner of the room. Its wings made the perch thrum and list. The owl balanced easily, and dipped its head to bathe its beak in the water bowl, never taking its eye off Draco as it did so.  
  
The scroll contained the same message as all the others, with only one change in the last line. Draco scanned it, a small, pleased smile tugging at his lips.  
  
 _You have been noticed. You are being warned. Do not try to break into Gringotts. You have ten days to change your mind._  
  
Draco sighed and laid the scroll down. The messages had started coming a fortnight ago, so the count had shrunk from twenty-four to ten days.  
  
What he couldn’t understand was, if someone knew about the truth behind his disguise and his plan to break into Gringotts, why would they give him such a long period to change his mind? They could have waited until three days were up and then attacked, or gone to the Aurors at once. Along with all the drama of the scrolls and the countdown and the owl that this person sent, a new one every day, Draco was beginning to think that his courteous enemy had a hidden agenda.  
  
He turned to the owl, who was still watching him with its wings folded behind it in a way that spoke of wordless disdain. “Or perhaps your master can’t make up his mind about what he really wants. I usually despise people who do that, you know, but I might be willing to make an exception for people who send me—”  
  
He had turned around completely in his chair to speak to the owl, and that saved his life. The sudden explosion from the middle of the table sent the shards of wood and metal over his head and to the side instead of straight into his face.  
  
Draco dropped immediately to the floor. He had no former training like  _some_ people had got in the Aurors or as part of the Recidivus Guard, but he knew what to do with a sound like that when he heard one.  
  
The flying shards were already settling. That explosion had been powerful but small, and was already contained. Draco lifted his head cautiously. The first thing he did was look at the perch. He wondered if the writer had taken the chance of sacrificing his owl along with Draco’s life.  
  
No. The owl was flying heavily towards the window it had come in by. It had left nothing more than a small swirl of dark feathers behind.  
  
“Ah, I’m afraid I can’t permit you to do that,” said Draco, and drew his wand. At his command, a subtle mesh of white light sprang up across every window in the Manor, and across some of the doorways that didn’t have doors, as well. It still permitted light and air to flow through, but it wouldn’t allow any more solid body. The owl bounced off the mesh and let loose a baffled screech. “Private compunctions, you understand.”  
  
The owl circled back down, diving at his head. It could have caused a lot of damage if it had landed and buried its talons in the back of his neck, as it obviously intended to do, but Draco had a constitutional dislike of that, and his wand was ready. Again a mesh formed, this time into a net around the owl that bounced it back towards the ceiling and then held it in midair, looping furiously around and around.  
  
“Now,” said Draco, and gestured a little with his wand. The mesh net floated down towards him, while Draco carefully checked himself over to make sure that he hadn’t taken a wound he hadn’t noticed. But no, his arms and even his face, when he reached up and felt around with one hand, were unmarked. Draco nodded and focused his attention on the owl in front of him. “I wonder what you can tell me about your owner?”  
  
The owl jerked its neck forwards and snapped its beak. Draco ignored that, instead sending a house-elf for a jewel that he had stolen last year as part of the seduction of an American witch who’d been briefly visiting England. It had taken him a while to work out what the jewel did, and he still wasn’t entirely sure that that was the  _only_ thing it did. But it was interesting and powerful enough that he wouldn’t hesitate to use it now.  
  
When the elf brought the jewel, a large ruby with a hole pierced through the center, Draco held it up and looked at the owl through it. He could see spells that were meant to defend the owl from curses and speed its flight, traditional ones that were woven into the feathers of post-owls almost from their birth. He could see a few added charms that would get the owl through windows that should have been too small for it to pass through, and one or two that made him raise his eyebrows. They were protections against fire and water, something most owls wouldn’t meet in any case.  
  
But he didn’t see the long, fragile golden thread that most owls also picked up, at least when they were owned by a single person instead of many—the one that led off like smoke into the distance and connected them to that owner. Draco would have been able to use the ruby to follow the smoke-trail, and another of his treasures to get a name from it. Without it, though, he really had no hope of tracing the owl back.  
  
“Well.” Draco lowered the ruby thoughtfully. He couldn’t believe that someone who owned this magnificent bird would be content to share him with others, but on the other hand, he had never heard of a spell that could remove the thread of magic, either. This opponent of his was clever.  
  
“I think I’ll just keep you for a while,” he told the owl comfortably, putting the ruby back into the velvet-lined box the house-elf had carried it in. “Until your owner comes looking for you, maybe?”  
  
The owl snapped at him hard enough that Draco knew he would have lost a finger if it had been within the owl’s reach, and let out a truly horrifying screech. Draco nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t like losing my freedom, either,” he told the owl as he floated the mesh net over to a cupboard in the side of the dining room. “But your owner should have sent a less valuable possession if he didn’t mind losing it.”  
  
The owl screamed once more before it vanished from sight. Draco told the house-elves to bring a perch and a dish of food into the cupboard in about an hour, then stood.  
  
The death-threats were becoming annoying. And skilled. When Draco examined the middle of his table, he couldn’t tell what spell had blown open that particular explosion. He shook his head and clucked his tongue.  
  
He had spent years building a reputation as someone permanently scarred by the war, someone who had retreated into his ancestral home and pleaded for peace. People who were on the underside of the black market knew better, of course, but the reputation had kept him safe.  
  
Perhaps it was time to make it pay off in another way.  
  
*  
  
The Aurors arrived precisely three days later, when Draco was busy drinking some soup out of a cup of gold-chased unicorn horn and wondering if it had been a mistake to apply to them at all. They must have a lot of death threats to deal with, he thought as he stood up; he hadn’t even received a reply to his owl.  
  
But there were enough Aurors at his gates, waiting patiently for him to lift the interior gates of silvery enchantment that protected his home, that Draco was well-satisfied. It might take them a while to respond to threats, but they obviously came in force when they did come.  
  
He sent another elf to take away the cup of unicorn horn and bring him his enchanted telescope as he watched the Aurors walk slowly up the drive. He had thought there was something familiar about the one in the lead—  
  
With the telescope, it was easy to make out the wild black hair, the green eyes, even the scar on his forehead that he thought was hidden by his lamentably tangled fringe. Draco lowered his telescope and allowed himself half a minute of laughing until he couldn’t breathe. It would take the Aurors longer than that to follow the guidance of the house-elf through to this room, anyway.  
  
Harry Potter had a reputation as a dogged investigator, and a very good bodyguard. Of course they would send someone like him when a call for help came in from someone they couldn’t trust. Draco wiped his tears away and shook his head. He had to be serious when he saw them. This wild rejoicing wouldn’t fit in with his mask.  
  
But it was  _perfect_. The assignment of Harry Potter to the case would convince a bunch of people outside it, who might be inclined to doubt Draco, that this was a powerful series of threats. It would keep Draco safe even from an enemy who had the magical capabilities that his enemy had shown so far (which was the reason Draco had asked for Auror protection in the first place). It would also give Draco a slight hindrance, in that he would have to make sure Potter didn’t find out his plot to break into Gringotts, but Potter, although stolid and prone to get results when he labored on a case for a long time, didn’t have the reputation of sterling intelligence. Draco was sure that he could dance circles around such an Auror.  
  
He could even have some fun while he was doing so. Draco sat back in his chair and put on the sober mask that they would expect from the Recluse of Malfoy Manor, while he planned for what he would actually do.  
  
*  
  
“We’re here, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco turned his head, and blinked. Then he dragged himself to his feet out of his chair, leaning on a cane that he’d modeled after his father’s. He knew from the flinches of the Aurors behind Potter that his glamour, of a pale face with heavy lines running from the corners of his mouth to the corners of his eyes, was doing its job.  
  
Potter didn’t flinch, of course, only looking at him with calm eyes. Draco schooled his disappointment after a second. He knew that Potter had seen far more alarming things, and it would be silly to expect him to run screaming, anyway.  
  
“This is about the death threats?” Draco dropped his head and stared at the floor. “They just can’t leave me alone.”  
  
He knew eyes were rolling above his head. That was good. His pretense had been designed to allow those eyes to roll. He looked up at last, and found Potter gazing at him thoughtfully, while the other Aurors muttered to each other.  
  
“What was the last threat like?” Potter asked. “Your complaint mentioned an explosion and an owl, but that was all.”  
  
Draco sighed a bit and turned to the cupboard where he’d kept his enemy’s owl imprisoned. “The scroll was delivered by this bird, and then exploded,” he said in a quavering voice, waving his wand to open the door. The screech of the owl from inside actually made one of the other Aurors jump, which Draco had to admit was satisfying. “I managed to stop the owl before it escaped.”  
  
Two female Aurors moved forwards and ducked in to look at the owl, but Potter didn’t. “You seem rather frail, physically and magically,” he remarked, still watching Draco as if he was the interesting one in all of this. “How did you manage to entrap the owl?”  
  
Draco smiled mistily at him. “Oh, the wards of my ancestors, the wards of my ancestors,” he said, and waved his hand vaguely at the windows. “They do come in useful from time to time.”  
  
“I’m sure they do.”  
  
Well, maybe Potter would be harder to trick than Draco had thought. The way he frowned and considered seemed to mean that he was more intelligent than the rumors said. Draco concealed a sigh. That would be tiresome if it was true.   
  
He couldn’t start his plan to have fun with Potter until they were alone anyway, though. So he stood patiently smiling when the other Aurors brought the flailing and shrieking owl out, still inside its mesh, and began casting spells on it. Draco kept his head bowed and his hands clasped around the cane, watching the spellcasting from the corner of his eye. He would consider that memory in a Pensieve later and see what he could learn of the magic that the Aurors supposedly kept for themselves, away from ordinary wizards.  
  
“You don’t know why someone would threaten you?” Potter asked, drawing Draco’s attention back.  
  
Draco was too old a hand to be caught out by that trick. He widened his eyes. “But I told you that, in my complaint about the threats. Old hatreds. There’s someone out there who hates me for what I did during the war.”  
  
“Many people might, but most of them wouldn’t send you threats years later,” said Potter. “I thought most of your money went to reparations after the war. You’re  _sure_ you don’t have any idea who this is?”  
  
“An enemy,” Draco said, and gave Potter a blinking look. “Someone who hates me. I already told you that.”  
  
Potter placed his fingers next to his lips, as if he was actually considering the answer this time. “What have the threats said?”  
  
“There’s been a countdown,” Draco said, and lowered his voice and glanced from side to side. He knew the other Aurors were buying his cowardly act; one of them had actually said the word “coward,” although it was too muffled for Draco to be sure which one of the three it was. “They said that I had twenty-four days at first to stop.”  
  
“Just stop?” Potter pressed instantly. “Not stop anything in particular?”  
  
“What am I doing in particular,” said Draco, and lowered his voice still further, “other than living?”  
  
Potter nodded, although Draco didn’t think he was entirely convinced by that. He wished he could have  _known_ if he was convinced. But he didn’t want to drop the glamour or show anything different until they were alone. He waited patiently, and eventually Potter asked another question.  
  
“How far did the countdown get?”  
  
“Ten days as of the scroll that exploded the day I contacted you.” Draco widened his eyes and rubbed his hands together. “Do you think that means I have seven days to live?”  
  
“We’ll try to think more positively than that,” said Potter, with a faint smile. Draco could think positively, of course; he thought that smile was positively inane. “Well. It’s not much to go on, but we’ll find something.”  
  
“I’m sure you will,” said Draco, and stood back and bowed when Potter looked down the corridor that led to the dining room. “Please feel free to search anywhere you’d like.” Complicated glamours and spells hid Draco’s treasures, his workroom, his potions lab, and everything else that he needed in order to conduct his cons. The Aurors wouldn’t find anything. Draco had learned well from the regular checks he’d been subjected to after the war; the Aurors had a procedure, and Draco’s spells would foil that procedure.  
  
Potter gave him one more meaningless smile and stalked away on his rounds. Draco watched him go, smiling slightly.  
  
This might be more of a challenge than he’d imagined. But he thought he’d like that.


	2. The Hidden Gem

“You’re utterly unable to think of  _anything_ that would make someone threaten you?”  
  
Draco looked down at his cane. The top of it reflected the walls around him, which included a panel that hid one of his greatest collections of rubies. If they found them, the Aurors would be immediately suspicious.  
  
It pleased Draco, to stand there talking to someone that a lot of people praised as the best Auror of all, and know he had no more idea of what Draco was concealing than an ordinary Auror would have.  
  
“Nothing?”  
  
Draco blinked and looked up. “I can think of plenty of people with grudges,” he whispered tiredly. “But you told me that most of them are shut away. Is it surprising that after we’ve gone through a list of prime suspects and eliminated most of them, I would have trouble thinking of any of the rest?”  
  
Potter was silent, frowning instead of talking. He turned and lifted his wand so that it pointed at one section of the wall that constituted the outer edge of the panel. Draco’s heart gave a great bound, but he stood still. If Potter found the hidden gems through his own effort, then Draco would take the challenge and deal with it. He wasn’t going to be cowardly enough to reveal it because of his reactions, though.  
  
But Potter said only, “ _Memoria_.”  
  
The walls glowed briefly, along the edges of panels and in the center of them alike. Draco straightened his shoulders. At least this spell wouldn’t help Potter uncover the location of anything Draco had hidden.  
  
It  _did_ bring to life memories of things the house had seen. If that included some of Draco admiring his gains, then Draco would have to act quickly.  
  
But instead, the pale blue light that poured from the walls formed into delicate, etched white images that showed Death Eaters parading through the corridor, clutching a bloody heart in front of them. Draco didn’t have to feign his shudder or his pulling back.  
  
Potter, he noticed, was watching him. “Do you see something that could be the face of your enemy?” he asked softly, gesturing with his wand at the memories.  
  
Draco had to sneer. “You were the one who told me that all of the Death Eaters I could name were dead or in prison,” he said, and didn’t care if it was pettish. Potter would probably expect him to be pettish, anyway. There were people that Draco’s guise of “completely reformed Death Eater” worked on, but not him.  
  
Potter raised his eyebrows a little, and his expression altered. “Is it hard, living with those memories?”   
  
Draco spent a moment only making rapid calculations in his mind. This sympathy was probably false, the sort of trick that Potter used to lull suspects, but on the other hand, Draco’s persona would respond to it in a certain way. Draco just had to keep on his guard against taking Potter’s soft tone seriously.  
  
So he let his head droop and his shoulders slump, and he nodded. “Sometimes it is,” he whispered. “When we—when I came back to live here, I realized that every place in the Manor is associated with a memory of death or torture.” He glanced at the memory, which had changed into a vision of the Dark Lord addressing some Snatchers. He turned his head to the side, genuinely uncomfortable now.  _Well, let that strengthen the pretense._ “I don’t want to look at it anymore.”  
  
Potter banished the memory spell with a flick of his wand. “I was just trying to call up memories of people who might have been in the Manor and threatened you in a way you don’t remember,” he said soothingly.  
  
Draco laughed wearily. “Trust me, I remember all of it.”  
  
Potter hesitated and reached out one hand. Draco had no idea where it would settle. He stood still, wondering if Potter would touch him after all.  
  
But then one of the other Aurors, who Draco had learned was called Jordan Mytherian, yelled from the dining room. “Sir, we need you to look at the owl!”  
  
Potter pulled his hand back, gave Draco one more cool look, and walked back to the dining room. Draco lingered, staring sadly into the head of his cane (and incidentally making sure that all of his secret panels were still shut and sealed in the reflection).  
  
He was thinking, too, of Potter’s expression and apparent desire to touch him, thoughts he could hardly indulge in front of the other Aurors.   
  
He was shocked by his own desire to receive that touch. And that altered the plan he wanted to use with Potter. Two such desires should not go unused.  
  
*  
  
“This owl has been  _scrubbed_ clean of personal magic.”  
  
Draco settled heavily back into his chair and lifted a hand to his mouth. He didn’t have to conceal laughter; his control was too perfect for that. But he had to admit, he was glad that he had lived to hear such incredulity in the voice of an Auror. They had never sounded anything but certain when they were arresting his parents.  
  
“What does that mean?” he asked, in a quavering voice, and thumped his cane on the floor when no one looked at him. “I  _said,_ what does that mean? I don’t understand.”  
  
Auror Mytherian glared at him. Mytherian had clear brown eyes, brown hair that fell to his shoulders in windswept waves, and an honest-to-Merlin cleft in his chin. Draco wondered, idly, if Mytherian resented that he had diminished chances to be a hero as long as Potter was around. “It  _means_ ,” he said, voice mocking, “that this owl has been scrubbed clean of personal magic.”  
  
“Jordan.”  
  
The one word from Potter, uttered as absently as Draco’s thoughts while Potter held the Stunned owl on one fist and carefully examined its wings, and Mytherian shrank like a whipped puppy. He turned away from Draco and made a little bow towards a far wall.  _As much of a compromise as he can make with his pride,_ Draco decided.  
  
Just like that, a plan for dealing with Mytherian bloomed in Draco’s mind. It wouldn’t be necessary if Potter was the only Auror who stayed, but it might be amusing if Mytherian did.  
  
“It means,” said another of the Aurors, Sarah Crystal, who seemed to have decided that it was her job to be sympathetic to Draco, “that whoever owns this owl has gone through the trouble of having all sorts of magical signatures removed. Not only his—or hers—but the signature of anyone who owned the owl, who bred it, and who enchanted it.” She gave a thoughtful glance at the bird. She had blue eyes, and a firm grip on her wand that Draco thought was wiser than she could have known, if she was wasting sympathy on him. “I’ve seen that done, but only on inanimate objects. Weapons, mostly. I wonder how a living one survived it.”  
  
“It’s clear that it did,” said the third Auror, who stopped prowling around the dining room long enough to glance over his shoulder. “Who cares how?”  
  
This Auror, Elian Greengrass-Rosier, had dark eyes and a hateful glare for Draco every three steps or so. Draco kept his eyes down, and acted tame and meek. He would know how to handle Greengrass-Rosier if he needed to, and that would have to be enough.  
  
“Any bit of knowledge could be critical to this case,” said Potter, with a look round that would have damped Draco if was an Auror. He could only be glad that he wasn’t. “We need to remember that.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier straightened his back and clasped his hands behind it. “Of course we need to remember it, sir, but—”  
  
“The owl has nothing to tell us,” said Potter, and turned away from Greengrass-Rosier with an aplomb that made Draco lick his lips. That was permissible. His persona was such a coward that they could well be chapped and in need of licking. “Do you have any other clues to the identity of your enemy?”  
  
“I didn’t know the owl was a clue,” Draco muttered, and blinked, and grasped at the head of his cane for a moment. He thought about it, letting the whole, agonizing effort of the thought be visible on his face, and then shook his head. “No. Nothing.”  
  
Potter was silent for a moment, fingers drumming on his wand holster.  
  
“He hasn’t received any other threats since then, either,” said Greengrass-Rosier, giving Draco another glare. “I don’t think this enemy has been active enough to warrant the attention of four full-class Aurors, sir. I suggest we leave.”  
  
“We’ll do that after we find out who’s threatening Malfoy,” Potter said, and Draco thought he would continue, but Greengrass-Rosier interrupted.  
  
“With all due respect, sir, who  _cares_ about a threat to Malfoy? It would only be someone doing what should have been done during the war! If it’s an assassination, I would be tempted to help the assassin—”  
  
“Elian.”  
  
Potter’s voice had more echoes than it should have. Greengrass-Rosier went still and pale and tilted his head back, a muscle jumping in his throat. His skin was so pale that Draco was tempted to reach out and touch it, to feel the warmth draining away. He managed to restrain himself, but it was hard.  
  
“I know full well that Malfoy was supposed to marry your sister, and did not.” Potter’s voice had dropped an octave, and it sounded impressive. Draco wondered for a moment why Potter didn’t use  _this_ voice in his day-to-day life. “I didn’t question your assignment to this case because I know that you have a lot of experience with death threats and tracking anonymous owls to their sources. Now I see that I should have questioned it. You’re dismissed.”  
  
The last word might have been poison, from the way Greengrass-Rosier reacted. He was paler than ever, and stretched out one hand as though he assumed he could touch Potter and have his mistake redeemed. “Please—sir—if I receive another reprimand—you know what’ll happen—”  
  
“So do you.” Potter stared at him with eyes as pitiless as Nagini’s, and Draco knew something about that, from the number of times the Dark Lord had forced him to stand before the swaying snake as punishment. “That should have let you keep your tongue still, but it didn’t. _Get out of my ward’s house_.”  
  
“You can’t even call him your ward yet! You haven’t determined whether you need to protect him, whether there’s a bodyguard case here, instead of Malfoy just exaggerating or trying to play a trick on us—”   
  
_I’m glad that I didn’t marry into his family,_ Draco thought fervently, although his face only expressed a little stupefied surprise, his mouth hanging open and his eyes blinking frantically.  _What an idiot. And it’s probably hereditary._  
  
“I determined that there’s enough of a threat when I saw the presence of utterly unknown magic on the owl,” said Potter. “And you know as well as I do that it’s the Auror in charge of a case who makes that decision.” He moved a step forwards, and Greengrass-Rosier retreated, even though Potter hadn’t drawn his wand.  _Yet,_ Draco added mentally, watching the way Potter’s hands twitched near his waist. “Don’t try to use procedure against me. Not when procedure demands your reprimand. Go back to the Ministry. Now.”  
  
The last word wasn’t even particularly emphatic, but Greengrass-Rosier flinched and nodded. He did turn his back and stalk towards the doorway.  
  
But as he passed Draco, he tried to cast something. It was probably as harmless as the Tripping Jinx. Draco could easily have resisted or bypassed it, even in his persona, and not taken much harm.  
  
He didn’t get to find out what the spell was, though, because before the first syllable had slithered out of Greengrass-Rosier’s lips, Potter moved. There was a long, complicated moment that Draco backed away from without thinking, and which he knew he would have to watch in a Pensieve later to make complete sense of.  
  
But it ended with Greengrass-Rosier on his back, squalling, and Potter standing above him with one boot on his chest and one on his windpipe. His left hand held the wand Greengrass-Rosier had been drawing. He looked down, and when Greengrass-Rosier tried to open his mouth to complain, Potter merely shifted his weight forwards. A warning crackle came from the trapped Auror’s throat, and he shut up, his eyes widening.  
  
“Sir,” said the Auror named Crystal. Draco looked at her and saw her studying the scene with some appreciation, but the moment she saw him looking, she veiled her eyes and glanced at the floor. “This will give Greengrass-Rosier more evidence against you if he does decide to report the conflict to the Ministry.”  
  
“So? I’m not worried about what I might say under Veritaserum, let alone what the Pensieve memories would show.” Potter tilted his weight delicately back, and Greengrass-Rosier went from fearing for his neck to fearing for his breath, from the expression on his face. “Besides, the minute I show this conversation to someone, he’s not an Auror anymore.”  
  
“That’s true, sir,” said Crystal, and stretched out a placating hand. “But I still think it would be for the best if you let him go.”  
  
Potter considered that, then nodded. “You’re probably right. I think he’s learned his lesson.” He jumped to the side with a long, arcing motion, landing smoothly on the floor and turning around to eye Greengrass-Rosier. “Get up. Get out of here. Wait outside. When I decide who’s staying here, I’ll send the other person who’s leaving to you with your wand.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier stood up and glared hatred. It had no obvious effect on Potter, leaving the departing idiot to stomp outside without his wand, but with a grudge big enough to last a lifetime. Draco had watched enough of them form that he should know.  
  
Potter turned to speak with Crystal and Mytherian. Draco blinked at his back. He could get away with simply maintaining a bemused response all through this, since he had already established himself as not particularly smart.  
  
Inside, he was reeling.  
  
 _Potter’s competent. He’s intelligent. He’s a good fighter. He’s a good leader. Why would anyone report otherwise?_  
  
Draco paused, making a connection he never had before. Some of his first contacts in the Ministry and Knockturn Alley had told him about Potter’s incompetence right before they got arrested or disappeared. He wondered now how many of them had run afoul of Potter or other Aurors because of inaccurate information. Maybe Potter only seemed formidable when you saw him in battle—and few of them would have had the opportunity Draco had, to see him there after becoming his new ward.  
  
 _So. This is another chance for me. I’m going to need a powerful distraction, though, one that’s different than the little flirtatious statements I intended to bewilder him with._  
  
Another plan, one he’d only half-considered, slid forwards and took that discarded plan’s place, and by the time Potter turned back to Draco from issuing crisp orders to Mytherian and Crystal, Draco was deep enough into it to peer shyly up, then let his eyelids descend again.  
  
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Potter said, shaking his head. “Not even a personal grudge should ever make an Auror behave like that in front of someone he’s supposed to protect.”  
  
“It’s all right,” Draco whispered, and glanced timidly up at Potter. “So long as someone as strong as you is here to protect me, I don’t care about the others.”  
  
Potter blinked and looked at him closely for a moment, as though he suspected Draco’s timid exterior hid something more. Since that was exactly what Draco wanted him to think, Draco gave him three more seconds of a bright smile, then wriggled back in his chair and looked at his feet. “What happens now?” he whispered.  
  
Potter paused for a second and looked keenly at Mytherian and Crystal. Draco expected him to dismiss Mytherian. Any fool could see that  _that_ one would cause some of the same problems for Potter as Greengrass-Rosier had, although his motive was hatred of and jealousy of Potter instead of hatred of Draco.  
  
But instead, Potter said, “Sarah, I’m going to send you back to the Ministry with the initial report, and to take Elian his wand. Someone should be there to give a fairly objective summary of what happened, and report to the Analysts about the magic on the owl.”  
  
Draco managed to hide a twitch. The Analysts were a relatively new branch of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, one that Potter’s friend Granger had founded. They specialized in tackling obscure spells, artifacts, and magical effects and tracking them to their origins, or at least comparing them with other spells and artifacts and magical effects they had encountered in the past.  
  
Crystal seemed to have some of the same reservations that Draco did. She looked straight at Potter, not letting her eyes pass to the side to touch Mytherian, and said, “But sir—”  
  
“I need Hermione to look at your memories of that owl,” Potter interrupted. “That’s the real reason I’m sending you. Can you do that?” He tossed Greengrass-Rosier’s wand to her as he was speaking, and Crystal caught it out of the air without trouble, although she still looked disturbed.  
  
But then she said, “Yes, sir,” in a colorless voice, and gave a single bow. When she straightened, it was to frown at Mytherian and Draco in turn before she spun and walked out of the Manor.  
  
“Good,” said Potter, turning back to Draco. “Let me explain to you how our schedule of guarding you will work.”  
  
“Whatever you come up with will be  _wonderful_ , I’m sure,” Draco said, and looked up at him with shining eyes.   
  
Potter twitched much the same way Draco had kept himself from doing a few minutes ago. “Of course,” he said, and then turned and beckoned Mytherian over, drawing his wand. A transparent map of the Manor flashed into existence between them. “This is where I’m going to position us.”  
  
Draco sat there and sneaked shy glances up now and then. From the way he kept twitching, Potter hadn’t the slightest idea of how to deal with them.  
  
 _Yes, actual physical flirting is the best way. Distracting for him, fun for me, and encouraging him to protect me even more._  
  
 _Who knows? There are certain situations where I might need someone competent and ready to sacrifice his life for me, and this could well be one of them._


	3. Curving Up

“Mask? Mask, is that you?”  
  
Draco could find his tolerant smile fairly easily, when he was dealing with someone like the young man who had almost given Gringotts into his hand. “Yes,” he admitted, dipping his head and crowding close to the fireplace so he could whisper. And so that the edges of the black velvet mask he wore, lined with silver around the eyeholes and nose, wouldn’t flip up and reveal anything of his face that he didn’t want revealed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to you for a few days. The goblins were onto me.”  
  
“No, really?” Jared Mindmirror came close to the fire on his side, eyes flaring. He was a handsome enough young man, black hair and grey eyes and half-blood, that Draco found he had no trouble playing his role as the mentor who admired the young man’s “innate talents” with “money-making magic” enough to offer him an apprenticeship. “I didn’t think I did anything that could have betrayed you! I’m sorry!”  
  
Perhaps the most irritating thing about Jared was his tendency to speak almost exclusively in exclamation points and question marks. “It was nothing you did,” Draco said soothingly. “A few people interfering where they shouldn’t have been, convinced they needed to protect the goblin stranglehold on wizarding wealth.”  
  
“They did?” Jared was all but bouncing on his heels now, and Draco’s mask hid a grimace. If his plan  _did_ get betrayed, and not through his mysterious enemy who somehow knew he was persuading Jared to hand over goblin secrets, then it would probably falter because of Jared’s noisiness during what were supposed to be clandestine conversations. “That’s terrible! Who was it?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “Just the usual pure-blood suspects, the ones who think that all goblins should have dominion over the money of all wizards. Malfoy, Greengrass, the like.”  
  
“It’s still terrible!” Jared leaned forwards, getting his head under the curve of the fireplace and revealing the short stature that marked him as half-goblin and trusted to work in the bank. “What can I do to help?”  
  
“Give me the last few spells on the vaults as quickly as you can,” said Draco, not needing to try to sound grim. “We need to make sure that we have at least some money beyond their control as quickly as we can.” He grinned. “And to make it better, I’ll take money mostly from the pure-blood vaults as a demonstration of what we can accomplish, before I put it back.”  
  
“That’s good!” said Jared, with a firm nod. “We need to have control of our own finances!”  
  
“We do,” said Draco, and thought,  _With a different definition of “we,” you poor bastard._ “Now. What about those last few spells? Were you able to write them down for me?” He knew Jared knew what they were. This whole campaign of seduction, from the time that “Mask” had contacted a young, bored half-goblin and whispered that the goblin control of money in Gringotts was tyranny and they needed to fight against it, had been aimed at actually getting Jared comfortable enough to tell him what those spells were.  
  
“I did better than that,” said Jared, and beamed at him. The subdued sentence should really have told Draco what was coming, he acknowledged later. “I memorized them myself! So I can come with you!”  
  
Draco hid a groan, and sighed. “But that would involve putting you in danger, Jared. The mentor isn’t ever supposed to do that with his apprentices.”  
  
“But I want to go with you! I have talents, you said so! I can help you right on the front lines!”  
  
“I could never forgive myself if something happened to you,” Draco said simply.  _Except getting reprimanded by your superiors once they figured out that you were the one who betrayed their defenses._ “I’m sorry, Jared, but I can’t allow it.”  
  
Jared folded his arms and looked around. “Then I won’t tell you what the final spells are, Mask!”  
  
Draco sighed again. “Then I suppose that I’ll just have to go in and try to free the money anyway. This goal is more important than a single life.” As Jared swung around with his mouth open, he added, “I’m glad to see that you feel the same way. So the next you hear of me will be showing the goblins how easy it is to breach their defenses, and how they’re better off letting some wizards into positions of influence over their money. Or perhaps you’ll be the one to find my body.”  
  
“I couldn’t  _stand_ that,” Jared whispered, and buried his head in his hands.   
  
Draco waited for a moment in a posture that implied he was turning away. Then he faced the fireplace again and gently shook his head, making sure that he was still shaking it when Jared looked up. “It’s all about what needs to be done,” he said. “About goals bigger than ourselves. Not what one person can or can’t stand.”  
  
“But you need my help. You said so.”  
  
Draco glanced at the floor and shrugged. “But you’ve chosen to sacrifice helping me to childish ideas and grudges. I’m afraid that I can’t count on you anymore.”  
  
Jared gave a hysterical gulping sound that had heralded a flood of tears in the past. Draco had been able to stop him with a harsh word then; he would probably be able to do the same thing now. But instead, he waited, and Jared brushed away incipient tears and nodded to him.  
  
“You’re right, Mask. This is bigger than any of us. We’re going to set up our  _own_ bank, and the goblins can’t stop us.”  
  
Draco gave Jared a full-on, approving smile, not least because of the lack of exclamation points. “Exactly. Now, can you tell me what the final spells are, and in such glowing detail that I don’t even have to write them down? I’ll remember them just from the way you tell them to me.”  
  
Jared blushed and looked up at him. “Well, fine. On the Malfoy vault are…”  
  
*  
  
“Where did you go?”  
  
Draco looked up at Potter, who was standing in the doorway of his bathroom with his arms folded. “Here,” he said, and yawned, and took another drink from the heavy crystal cup that sat on the side of his sink. “Sometimes I really have to piss, you know. Comes from the pressure on the bladder from the bad leg.” He picked up the cane, which had been leaning against the wall, and nodded to Potter. “And now I’m for bed.”  
  
“You weren’t in the bathroom,” Potter persisted. “I knocked on the door and called you, and you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t hear any stream of pissing, either. You went somewhere else, you  _must_ have.” Potter’s face was slightly red, his hand gripping his wand. “Do you have any idea how  _dangerous_ that is with someone trying to kill you?”  
  
 _Merlin, he sounds like Jared._ Draco hated having to drop his eyes and cower in front of someone who was abusing him like this, but it was what his persona would do. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to tell you.”  
  
“Didn’t want to tell us what?” Potter’s voice was quieter now, and he had advanced near enough to meet Draco’s eyes on the level, at least if he stooped. “Anything that matters to the case…”  
  
“This doesn’t matter to the case, except affecting how well I can run if I need to,” said Draco, and let a blush overspread his face as he looked away. “I’m sick, Potter, not just injured or depressed. The disease means that I have to use the bathroom. A lot.” He gestured to the loo, which was indeed full, the result of a nonverbal charm Draco had become proficient in. “And I have convulsions sometimes.”  
  
Potter strode right up to him. Draco cringed, until he realized what Potter was doing: digging his fingers into Draco’s hair and tilting his head. “Are you injured? Did you hurt your head at all? Scalp injuries bleed even when they’re shallow.”  
  
Draco blinked at nothing in the sideways position Potter was holding his head, then sighed. “They’re minor convulsions, Potter. I’m probably dignifying them too much even calling them that. What they mostly mean is that I jig and shake a bit, and then fall asleep. Or unconscious, if you will. I was sitting…I was sitting on the loo and asleep, and I didn’t hear you calling me.” Draco knew his blush was hot enough now to consume most of his face. “I’m sorry to be talking about it like this, it’s so  _embarrassing_.”  
  
“It’s not embarrassing,” Potter said in a surprisingly gentle voice, and tilted Draco’s head this time so that Draco was looking at him. “If I’d known you had this sickness, we would have made other arrangements for your protection. We still might have to make them. What happens if your enemy attacks while you’re unconscious and can’t run away?”  
  
“Well, yes, that’s what I meant when I said that it would affect my running speed,” Draco said, peacefully. He had slipped out of the bathroom down a secret passage that led from there to the disused room in the north wing of the Manor where he usually contacted Jared. “But you don’t need to trouble yourself at all, Potter. I think you’ve already troubled yourself enough.”  
  
“This is my  _job_ , Malfoy. And believe me, I’ve protected plenty of people with more embarrassing problems, and who tried to obstruct us more.” For a second, his fingers dug more into Draco’s hair as if he was remembering those people.  
  
Draco decided that now was the best way to test some of those conclusions he had come to about Potter earlier. He moaned a little, and Potter moved a hasty step away. Only Draco’s grip on the cane saved him from crashing to the floor. “What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”  
  
“Quite the opposite,” Draco said, and buried his flaming face in his hands.  
  
Potter paused, then came towards him. “I didn’t intend to do that, either,” he whispered as he knelt beside Draco. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you’re no longer the boy I despised so much in school.”  
  
Draco sniffled into his hands, and did his best to lift his head a little. “It’s not your fault,” he insisted valiantly, scrubbing at his face. “How could it be your fault?”  
  
“I want to be clear, so there are no misunderstandings,” said Potter, his face and voice desperately earnest and noble. “I can’t date or sleep with people I protect. I did it once, and it was the worst mistake of my life.”  
  
Draco was glad that his hands were wrapped around his cheeks, so his jaw couldn’t drop open. He had never heard  _that_ gossip. What in the world was wrong with his spy network, that they had never thought to pass such delicious rumors on to him?  
  
Potter was, meanwhile, pursuing his misguided mission of trying to make Draco feel better. “I know you’ve changed, and tonight was my reminder of that, if I needed one. I don’t want you to think that you need to subdue your natural reactions around me or change who you are because of me. I just won’t be responding, that’s all.”  
  
Draco made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sniffle or anything Potter wanted to take it as, and then leaned back and looked up at him. “I understand,” he whispered. “Thank you for being so clear and honest. It helps me greatly.” It at least helped him estimate Potter as an opponent, and think that it probably wasn’t real stupidity that had handicapped him in the past, in battle with some people Draco knew as competitors or colleagues. They had mistaken intense devotion to a code of Gryffindor principles for lack of general intelligence.  
  
Draco still thought the code of Gryffindor principles could be rather stupid, himself, but he wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it was  _always_ so.  
  
“Good.” Potter pressed lightly down on his shoulder, then glanced around the bathroom. “Auror Mytherian will be on guard outside your door for the first part of tonight, until two-o’clock. Then we’ll switch, and I’ll be there.”  
  
“You’re not going to be near me all night?” Draco was rather proud of the gasping choke he introduced into his voice, and the pathetic hand that reached up towards Potter. “But I trust you more than I trust Auror Mytherian!”  
  
Potter shot him another keen glance. “I thought you knew. We discussed this earlier. One of us will be outside your bedroom door, and one inside. It’s just that we’ll switch positions so that we don’t fall into too established a routine. Both of us will be awake all night.”  
  
Draco nodded and let his eyes convey his relief, while he kept his laughter inside.  
  
 _The perfect opportunity to seduce Potter, noble principles and all. He certainly doesn’t have any trouble touching me. And having him stand next to my bed…_  
  
For a moment, Draco considered whether Potter would tell Auror Mytherian if Draco did seduce him, since he seemed so committed to honesty. Then he snorted a little.  
  
 _It wouldn’t matter if he did. Mytherian would report the incident, and rid me of part of the problem. Or he would keep silent and try to figure out a way to use the information against Potter later. And that will be after they’re out of the Manor and away from me._  
  
“Is something wrong with your throat?” Potter had heard the snort, and reached towards him.  
  
“Not at all,” said Draco blandly, and grasped the cane to help him to his feet. “I am tired, though. Can we go to bed now?”  
  
Potter’s eyes narrowed a little at the innuendo, but all he did was nod and lead Draco to his room.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned back into the embrace of his bed—wide, white, fluffy, with pillows piled up at the head and edged in lace, as befitted his assumed personality—and sighed. Potter gave him a curious glance, which Draco thought was tinged with envy, as he paced slowly around the bedroom, setting up wards and charms and traps. Draco watched out of the corner of one eye, but the information he could gather was limited; Potter performed most of his incantations nonverbally.  
  
“Is it that comfortable?”  
  
Draco twisted himself around and gave Potter a whimsical smile. “Well, a lot of it is being able to get the weight off my bad leg, you see,” he whispered. “But I’m surprised. Does someone who could surely buy anything he wants deny himself the pleasure of a nice,  _big_ bed?”  
  
Potter smiled slightly. “I don’t see much point in buying what I’d rarely get to sleep in.”  
  
“You have that many calls on your time?” Draco folded his arms behind him on the pillow and gave Potter an expression of absolute wonder that he didn’t have to feign. Potter had seemed able to command his time to him, to choose his cases, although up until that point Draco had assumed that was a function of his status as the Boy-Who-Lived rather than any inherent competence as an Auror. Perhaps not, though.   
  
“Yes,” said Potter simply, but he had turned around and stood with his back to Draco, gazing towards the door. “You don’t have to worry, though. I  _can_ concentrate on cases, and while that business with Elian Greengrass-Rosier might have given you a poor idea of me, you’ll be my primary charge for as long as you need protection.”  
  
“It didn’t concern me,” Draco said, and made his voice as gentle as a wind swaying grass. “It impressed me.”  
  
Potter twisted back to him, one eyebrow raised. “Well, it’s good to know that you’ll trust me to fight for you.”  
  
“More than that,” Draco said, and let his eyes linger and burn. “I would trust you with every  _part_ of me.”  
  
Then he turned away again and wrapped one arm around his head, sighing. “I’m sorry. I forgot that you don’t want to hear something like that from me. I promise I’ll be quiet.”  
  
Potter said nothing. The silence settled on the room, and Draco knew that he needed to do something else, that innuendos by themselves weren’t enough to make Potter abandon his annoying self-righteous stance and come to bed with him.  
  
Draco moved his arm gently up under his pillow until his wand was aimed at his temple—but with his pillow in the way, Potter would have a lot of difficulty seeing that. Then he whispered the incantation of a certain spell he hadn’t used in a long time, and then mainly for revenge against difficult people.  
  
He fell asleep smiling, a swift, sweet, natural sleep that he knew would be broken later on that night. But breaking it was the plan, after all.  
  
*  
  
“Malfoy!”  
  
Draco came awake thrashing and gasping. Potter was standing over him, his wand lit and his expression strained.  
  
“Are you all right?” Potter was sweeping the bed with a professional gaze. “You were groaning as if you were in pain. Are you subject to nightmares usually? If not, we have to consider the possibility that this was a sorcerous attack from your enemy.”  
  
Draco felt the blush lighting his face on fire, but even that was a natural consequence of the spell. “It wasn’t a nightmare,” he whispered, and drew his robes tighter around his groin. “It was—a natural occurrence. But I do need to cast a Drying Charm.”  
  
Potter certainly understood him, but he couldn’t keep his eyes flickering down to the wet patch on Draco’s groin anyway. Then he blushed himself and nodded. “It’s nearly time for me and Auror Mytherian to switch places,” he murmured. “I’ll alert him, and he can escort you to the bathroom if you’d like.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Draco, not trying to disguise the huskiness in his voice that the Wet Dream Charm usually created.  
  
Potter turned away. Draco watched the stiffness in his back muscles and smiled.  _First point to me, I think._


	4. Displays of Vengeance

“A quiet night,” said Mytherian, his attention on the breakfast in front of him.  
  
Draco curled his lip a little behind the protection of his cup. He knew that the breakfast his house-elves served was excellent, consisting as it did of hot chocolate, scones smothered in butter and more chocolate, fresh fruit with chocolate ready at hand to dip it in, and bangers that had, for once, no chocolate, but it still seemed unprofessional for an Auror never to look around once in five minutes.  
  
“Yes, it was,” said Draco, because one had to say something, and Potter was out of the way. He looked at the  _Prophet_ again, flicking idly through the pages. Stories on Quidditch, stories on music, stories on the latest scandal to break out in the Ministry—a secret marriage between a member of the Wizengamot and another member’s much-younger daughter. Draco read that with some amusement. At least the paper wasn’t a complete loss.  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
Draco started a little and then looked up. Mytherian was leaning forwards, his hands braced on the table as if he was going to leap over it and come at Draco that way. Draco catalogued at least seven escape routes in the first three seconds, and then made himself relax and listen instead of reacting with paranoia.  
  
“Yes?” he asked, picking up a cup of hot chocolate both to have something to do with his hands and to have a hot weapon in case Mytherian  _did_ come at him.  
  
“You have to know that I’m a better Auror than Potter, right?” Mytherian whispered, and swayed towards him with feral intensity.  
  
Draco’s sense of danger passed away in a flash and scattering of sparks, leaving laughter in its wake. He did his best to keep that off his face, of course. If Mytherian knew he was an object of mirth, he’d probably attack.  
  
“I don’t know that,” he mumbled into his cup. “Everyone always talks about what a great Auror Potter is.”  
  
“They don’t know him at all.” Mytherian climbed to his feet now and stalked back and forth a little in front of the table. “They don’t know how many of his victories rely on luck or other people helping him.”  
  
“I thought Potter gave plenty of credit to other people helping him,” said Draco. It let him sound innocent and bemused, and as far as he knew, it was actually the truth. Potter was forever bleating about the way that Weasley and Granger had helped him defeat the Dark Lord.  
  
To Draco, that was an example of Potter going too far. They might have helped him with spells and fighting individual Death Eaters, but had they walked into the Forbidden Forest with him, or helped in the final duel with the Elder Wand? No, they had not.  
  
But Potter’s arse was stuffed up with modesty. It was probably no surprise that he would deny his own contributions so that his friends could have some crumbs. And if Potter was actually the attention-seeker Draco had once believed him to be, it was also a brilliant strategy. Modest disclaimers made people praise you  _more_.  
  
Draco ought to know.  
  
“He might give credit to his friends,” said Mytherian, with an impatient motion of one hand that nearly upset Draco’s chocolate cup. Draco decided to keep his opinion on clumsy Aurors to himself for now, and see what transpired. “But he doesn’t give credit to the other Aurors who help him with arrests.”  
  
 _And here we get to the heart of the grudge,_ Draco thought, while maintaining an elaborate befuddled look. “Did you do that?” he whispered.  
  
“Of course I did,” said Mytherian, with a snort that said what he thought of Draco’s intelligence. “If you knew the number of cases I’ve helped him with, only to see him getting away with denying that anyone had helped him at all…” His voice trailed off, and he turned away and kicked the wall. “And this one will be just the same. The press will say that he did all the work.”  
  
Draco raised one eyebrow, now that Mytherian was facing away. The press saying that Potter was the sole one responsible for these cases wasn’t the same as  _Potter_ saying it. And Draco knew that Potter had actually begged the press not to say such things, and they kept on doing it anyway.  
  
But why he should want to bring Mytherian to his senses? There was the chance that this could fall out well for Draco himself, and he was all for encouraging that.  
  
Mytherian scowled at the wall he’d kicked, and then turned around and studied Draco intently again. “The same thing’s going to happen again,” he said, “unless you help me.”  
  
“Me?” Draco looked at his cane, leaning against the chair, and then into the cup, as if an answer would be there.  
  
“Don’t play coy. You may not be much, but you have a respected voice now that most people think you’re redeemed.” Mytherian snapped his fingers insistently. “If you give an interview to the paper about how much I helped you when I was your guard, then that would be all you needed to do. One little interview. Consider it?”  
  
 _When you’re so charming, how can one resist?_ But Draco had a lot of practice at keeping sarcasm inside now, especially sarcasm that would destroy his persona at once. He looked away modestly instead. “Do you really think they would believe me over Potter? That would be the only problem.”  
  
“If you put it well enough, and give details, then they will.” Mytherian nodded. “I just want my work  _recognized_ for once.”  
  
 _Then work harder._ But Draco would be the last one to suggest that now. He folded his hands and murmured, “All right. I just hope that no one attacks me in the meantime.”  
  
“You don’t trust me to protect you?” Mytherian sounded offended all over again. He turned in a slow circle around the dining room, apparently studying the windows. “I can recommend several wards and enchantments I could put up that would make your house impregnable.”  
  
 _Which just means that he’s not very good at wards, if he can’t recognize the quality of the ones on the Manor that my enemy already got past._ But Draco nodded enthusiastically again. There was the chance that he could learn about special Auror spells from Mytherian in the way that Potter was so far proving himself reluctant to teach. “All right.”  
  
Mytherian smiled, pleased, and lifted his wand.  
  
“Jordan! I asked you not to add any enchantments until we made the tests that we talked about earlier, remember? It’ll prejudice them too much if we’re working against our own spells.”  
  
 _Perfect timing, Potter,_ Draco thought, as Potter strode into the dining room and went over to help himself to some of the strawberries and the one scone on the table that had butter instead of chocolate on it.  _I suppose he doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth._  
  
“I remember,” said Mytherian, and lowered his wand.  
  
The look he flashed at Potter was utter murder. Draco raised an eyebrow and leaned back.  _It looks like we have a case of hatred here, a strong grudge, not just resentment of Potter’s fame. Interesting. I wonder how I can exploit it?_  
  
“Good, then don’t try it again.” Potter turned to Draco. “I can’t shake the idea that maybe your enemy is using your own wards against you. That means that I want to take care of some tests before we add anything to the protections.”  
  
Draco squinted at Potter, his persona’s face and his own instincts colluding for once. “What does that mean? How could someone use my own wards against me?”  
  
Potter paused with a strawberry on the way to his mouth, narrowing his eyes at Draco, and Draco wondered, too late, if he had perhaps sounded certain and strong, things that his persona wasn’t. He fidgeted and dropped his eyes to his plate. “If you don’t mind telling me,” he whispered.  
  
He thought Mytherian snorted in disgust off to the side, but he ignored that. Mytherian wasn’t the one it was important to fool right now.  
  
Potter put the strawberry into his mouth and chewed a little. Then he said, “The magical theory behind it is too complex for a quick summary, but basically, he sends an owl—let’s use that example. The owl is normal, or perhaps only enhanced by the spell that will take advantage of your wards, until it actually encounters the protections that are supposed to defend you. Then it reaches out and sucks power from them, turning the defensive charms into offensive ones. That’s the only way it can work. We’ve never found a case where defensive charms for one person can be turned defensive for another. He can make a normal message explode, but he can’t put armor on his owl.”  
  
 _That’s dead clever._ Contrary to Potter’s expectations, Draco did indeed know about the magical theory. He ate his own scone in silence, and then faltered, “But you can protect me from things like that?”  
  
“If he’s even doing it.” Potter flashed him a quick, unexpected smile. “I’ve been told more than once that I shouldn’t set up my own ideas as the end-all and be-all of explanations. He might be doing something entirely different. But it would give some clues as to why he was able to send you such a deadly threat that the wards didn’t stop.”  
  
 _Yes, it would._ Draco intended to do some research on his own. He leaned back and waved a hand that he hoped looked limp. “Then go ahead and do what you need to do.”  
  
Potter left the dining room without, so far as Draco was able to determine, having eaten more than three bites. Mytherian lingered a moment, stare burning into the side of Draco’s head.  
  
Draco stared back. “You were about to do something that might have made me  _less_ safe,” he said, and hunched in on himself. “I’m not sure that I trust you to protect me.”  
  
“Potter could be wrong.” This time, Mytherian’s look of utter loathing chased Potter up the corridor. “He has been, you know. In the past. Often.”  
  
“Is he going to be wrong about protecting me?” Draco blinked anxious eyes.  
  
Mytherian bit his lip in response, and charged up the corridor as if he thought that Potter might be confronting Draco’s enemy right now and didn’t want to be left out of the action. Draco laughed into his mind and continued eating, placidly.  
  
So many tacks he could take, he thought. There was Mytherian’s hatred of Potter to exploit. There was the information he had on one possible tactic of his enemy’s, and how he might fight it himself. There was Potter’s undeniable attraction to Draco. And there was the way that Draco had seen Potter go without eating or sleeping now, for over twelve hours. All sorts of interesting weaknesses appeared when someone did that.  
  
Draco smiled, and finished his breakfast.  
  
*  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Draco looked up from the pages of a book that would appear, to anyone who glanced at the cover, as a history of heroic Malfoy ancestors, while the pages inside it actually contained some of the complicated magical theory one would need to modify long-standing wards. “My enemy isn’t interfering with my protections?” he asked, marking his place in the book with one finger.  
  
It was Potter alone who came into the library, and he moved in an intent way that told Draco what would happen, even before he took a seat across the table from Draco and looked into his eyes.  
  
“Are you sure that you can’t think of  _anyone_ who would want to harm you?” Potter was almost wistful, but Draco didn’t think that came from past nostalgia when he’d wanted to harm Draco himself. He took one of Draco’s hands and held it securely. The warmth was nice, but Draco was too old a deceiver to be overcome merely because of physical pleasure. Potter was clever to think of it, though. “This is sophisticated work. Most of the time, we have at least a suspicion by now, but here, we don’t have a clue.”  
  
 _Time to use the second plan,_ Draco decided. He’d devised several plans during the hours that Potter and Mytherian had left him alone, with Monitoring Charms in place to alert them the instant anyone or anything—letter, animal, other human being—appeared next to Draco. They’d only had one false alarm with the house-elves, which they’d forgotten to make an exception in the charms for. Now, Draco traced a finger over the grain of the table and said, “Well.”  
  
“Yes?” Potter tightened his fingers a little, and stroked the back of Draco’s hand with his thumb.  
  
 _I still want to know what my spies were thinking, to decide that he was stupid._ Draco would have to do some shaking-up of his spies in the Ministry when this was over, he decided. Idiots, the lot of them.  
  
“There was someone who contacted me a short time ago,” Draco whispered. “I didn’t think anything of it. There are still people who won’t surrender the idea that I’m evil, that my family is doing something wrong simply by continuing to exist. No matter how much I insist that seeing your Muggle Studies teacher get eaten in front of you is enough of a conversion moment.”  
  
Potter was silent, his eyes appealing.  
  
“I dismissed him when he said that he had a plan to make me rich again. I said that I had enough money.” Draco swallowed. “Usually, people take that as a dismissal and go find someone else to help them in their little illegal projects. This person, however, sent me an angry owl the next day. It’s possible that he could be the one who’s sending me these threats and letters now. Although I hate to involve you…” Again, he looked nervously at the tabletop, and could practically feel the jolt that ran through Potter.  
  
“You hate to involve us? But that’s what we’re here for!” Potter gripped the side of the table as though he would rise to his feet. “You should have told us this right away!”  
  
Draco flinched and cowered, pulling his hand away from Potter. It was possible that someone with his experience could tell through a touch when Draco was lying. “Sorry, sorry. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal when he was dismissed.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
Draco blinked guilelessly at Potter. “He was Elian Greengrass-Rosier. I thought you knew. I thought that you brought him here as a test or something. Or maybe that someone in the Auror Department is suspicious of me and thinks that I’m still Dark. So they sent him to see what I would do.”  
  
Potter’s lips pinched shut. He looked as if he would like to take the heads off several of Draco’s ancestors in the portraits grouped around the library. Draco’s breath came shallowly.  _I can tell him where to start if he’d like instructions._  
  
“There is no way that we could have known that.” Potter’s words rang like dropped Galleons. He leaned towards Draco. “Are you sure it was him?”  
  
“If it wasn’t him, it was someone using his name.” Draco reared back in his chair as though doing his best to distance himself from what Potter was saying. “I don’t know. It was confusing. Maybe I’m wrong.”  
  
“It’s possible that he would do something like this,” Potter muttered, half to himself. “He has a standing grudge against you. And I know that he was a last-minute substitution on the team. I objected. Maybe he  _did_ manage to get himself invited on when he heard where we were going.”  
  
Draco said nothing, but smiled under his eyelids at the table. He’d had no idea that Greengrass-Rosier was a last-minute substitute for another Auror, but he loved these moments, when a victim’s mind would pick up coincidences and use them to weave an explanation he didn’t even have to prompt them with.  
  
“We don’t have any proof, though,” Potter concluded, and spun around to face Draco. “Please don’t say anything to Auror Mytherian about your suspicions. Not until we’re sure.”  
  
Draco inclined his head, contented in a way that was difficult to understand.  _So he’s smart enough to know that Mytherian isn’t happy with him. And that last “we” refers to me and him, I think, not to him and Mytherian._ “Of course.”  
  
Potter hesitated, one more time, then nodded and said, “I’ll have to send out owls. I don’t dare leave you alone now, not until we know for sure.”   
  
“You said that already,” said Draco, and stared at him with big eyes. “You’re not worried about your ability to overpower him, are you? You did it once before!”  
  
Potter abruptly leaned over the table and took Draco’s shoulders in his hands. Draco flinched before he could stop himself. Potter moved quickly when he was excited, it appeared. Draco would have to keep that in mind should things come to a fight, and hope that he could experience it soon in more pleasant circumstances.  
  
“Finding him is the problem, not overpowering him, although if he used that scroll spell on you and removed all the traces of magic from the owl, he’s more skilled than I realized,” Potter said. His voice was almost hypnotic, he was so close. “But I promise you, I will protect you no matter what else happens.” His hands tightened, in the way that Draco had sometimes had enemies hold him to force an answer. “Do you believe me?”  
  
Draco nodded. He had to nod.  
  
Potter broke away and gave him a strained smile. “Good. I’ll go and find Mytherian, and we’ll begin a new search. First, we need to find out where he went when he left the Ministry.” And he broke into a run out of the library, pausing only to raise some more protections and Monitoring Charms at the door.  
  
Draco sank back into his chair, eyes closed. He felt less satisfaction than he would have thought at managing to trick Potter so that all that strength and ferocity would be committed to defending Draco alone.  
  
He would have liked…  
  
Well, it was impossible, but he  _would_ have liked that strength and ferocity dedicated to him honestly.  
  
Draco sighed. Really, he had already learned not to wish for things he couldn’t have. And all the money he was going to take from Gringotts should be enough of a reward.


	5. Goblin Magic

“No one in the Ministry seems to know where Greengrass-Rosier has gone.” Potter leaned against the table in the dining room where Draco and Mytherian were eating, with a frown inscribed on his face. Mytherian seemed to have decided to ignore Potter in favor of the _Prophet._ If Potter cared, Draco couldn’t tell it from his face, body, or voice. “Not even people I thought were his friends.”  
  
“Would his friends speak to you?” Mytherian muttered without lifting his eyes from the paper.  
  
Potter acted as if he didn’t hear that, and maybe he didn’t. Draco had noticed that before, the intense concentration Potter could have for things that concerned him most, like the Snitch, to the point where he wasn’t distracted by the roars of the crowd in the stands. “So we’re back to square one.” He squinted at Draco. “You wouldn’t still have that letter Greengrass-Rosier wrote to you talking about that proposed crime?”  
  
“I burned it,” said Draco, and shrank a little. “I never—I never would have thought it was important.”  
  
“And yet when he gets threats later, he never thinks of it,” whispered Mytherian.  
  
“I thought you probably would have,” said Potter. He touched the side of his right eye as though it burned from lack of sleep. Draco thought it probably did. Spending so long on his feet had to be murder on Potter. “Oh, well. We have to go on the evidence that we do have, for now. I’ll do double duty tonight.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to ask what double duty meant, but Mytherian inadvertently answered him with his next hiss. “Thinks he’s too  _good_ to work with  _me_.”  
  
Potter spun around, reached across the table, and snatched the  _Prophet_ from Mytherian, which left him wringing his hands. Draco had to admit to watching open-mouthed as Potter tore the paper across, into confetti, and tossed the confetti up into the air, smiling with a wide and unblinking focus on Mytherian the whole time.   
  
“There,” said Potter. “Maybe now you’ll pay attention to what the  _hell_ I’m saying.”  
  
“I already heard what you’re saying,” said Mytherian, and his eyes were ugly and relentless. “That you don’t trust me, and we don’t have a lead on this case because Malfoy stupidly burned it. So what do you want me to do about it?”  
  
“Back me up.” Potter took a long step around the table. “The way that Auror partners are  _supposed_ to do.”  
  
“We’re working on this case together,” said Mytherian, folding his arms and tilting his chair back from the table with one long leg. Draco wondered at his insouciance for a second, and then saw the way the position brought Mytherian’s hand low enough to brush his wand. He probably thought he would have to defend himself against Potter any second. “That doesn’t make us partners the way you were with Weasley.”  
  
 _Were?_ That was another part of gossip that Draco hadn’t heard about.  
  
“It means that I expect you to accept my decisions as lead Auror,” said Potter, voice lowering into a growl. “And defer to—”  
  
“You’re not the fucking Head Auror!” Mytherian had bolted to his feet. He had his wand out now, but Draco didn’t even have to look around to know that Potter’s wand would already be out to match it. Maybe Mytherian knew how suicidal it would be to press the attack, although so far that hadn’t stopped him, and he didn’t do it. He stood there and flung mere words at Potter as if they were as deadly as spells. “We’re supposed to be working  _together._ To listen to you is just a suggestion. And it wouldn’t even be a suggestion if you didn’t exaggerate the results that you get from cases in an effort to be a  _darling_ of the papers!”  
  
“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Potter breathed. He had shifted his stance so that he was capable of springing in a number of different directions. A master of that same tactic himself, Draco appreciated it without liking it much, since it meant that Potter might be more of a threat even than he had anticipated. “I don’t exaggerate it. I downplay it, if anything—”  
  
“No one would believe that who had listened to the way you brag.” Mytherian’s bitterness filled the room in an overwhelming tide.  
  
“You’re an idiot,” said Potter, but without heat. His face was red, and he couldn’t meet Mytherian’s eyes. That made Draco blink. Were some of those accusations hitting home? Maybe they weren’t real, but Potter had such a sensitive conscience, and Mytherian might play on it without meaning to.  
  
“Yes, a true and dignified lead Auror on a case would call his partners that,” said Mytherian.  
  
Potter opened his mouth, probably to point out that Mytherian had just said they weren’t partners, but Mytherian turned and ran away from the dining room, down the corridor that led towards the outer wards. Potter cursed softly and dropped heavily into the chair beside Mytherian’s abandoned ones, leaning his forehead against his wrists.  
  
Draco sat still, enthralled. He had known that Mytherian despised Potter, but he had thought Mytherian wanted praise for being a good Auror more than he wanted to defy Potter. He had no idea what would happen next.  
  
Potter finally sighed and lifted his head. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, his voice thick. “It wasn’t professional.”  
  
 _But it was entertaining, which is much better._ Draco felt sorry for Potter, living in a world with such different priorities that wouldn’t let him believe that.  
  
Potter swiveled around in the chair to face him, eyes a little desperate. “Is there anything I can do to make up for that?” he asked. “To reassure you that you’re safe with me around, in spite of what I just did?” He tried to smile, then seemed to realize it was a pathetic effort and abandoned it. “Anything at all.”  
  
Draco seized the chance. He thought that he might not have the chance to exploit the tension between Mytherian and Potter after all; they were going to destroy themselves before he had anything to do with it. But one of his other plans needed a push. He bowed his head and looked at the table. “Kiss me?” he whispered.  
  
Potter went so still that Draco thought for a moment he hadn’t heard Draco and was listening for more, but then he said, “You can’t want that. It’s not professional, either.”  
  
“I saw the way you handled Greengrass-Rosier,” said Draco, and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I don’t have any worries about the way you can fight. You don’t need to reassure me of that.”  
  
“But what would kissing you gain you?”  
  
That gave Draco an important clue about how Potter thought of him.  _As someone who only values people in a purely utilitarian way. Well, far be it from me to disabuse him of that notion in reality._  
  
But Draco let his eyes fill with tears, something he had become good at doing during the war, when the Dark Lord liked to see a bit of sniveling. He looked away from Potter. “It wouldn’t  _gain_ me anything,” he whispered. “It would give me something I wanted. It would—never mind.” He let his head hang, and rose to his feet.  
  
Potter jumped up to stop him, reaching out with one light hand. No one, Draco thought, feeling that hand settle on his shoulder, would have thought there was such strength in it unless they’d seen Potter fight. “It’s just that I was unprofessional  _now,_ with Mytherian, and kissing you would also be unprofessional. Do you see? I don’t want to do something that would endanger you.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I’m not that other person you slept with. I’m not asking you to sleep with me.”  _Good thing I learned to lie with a straight face._ “I just want a kiss.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes. “I couldn’t do that. It would go against everything I am.”  
  
Draco sniffled and reached for his cane. “Then I reckon that line about being willing to do everything you could to make up for it was a lie,” he mumbled against his arm. “Thanks anyway.” He started to shove away from the table.  
  
And then Potter was there, his eyes gleaming with a wild decision, and Draco held still as Potter reached out and took his jaw and carefully raised his face. A second later, he was kissing Draco hard enough to hurt.  
  
Draco reeled back and clutched the table with one hand to sustain himself. It was what anyone would expect of him, when he was being kissed with  _that_ much passion and  _that_ much intensity. He couldn’t help it. It was the way things were.  
  
Potter didn’t put his tongue in Draco’s mouth, unfortunately, but Draco could get a sense of the way he tasted from his lips, and it was  _wonderful_. The heat, the panting breath raking his face, and the wetness of Potter’s jaw as he pulled back and stared at Draco were enough.  
  
 _For now._ Draco was fairly sure he would want this in the future, and the only way he wouldn’t get it was if he needed to maintain his distance from Potter for some reason.  
  
For right now, he didn’t need to do that. He let his fingers move along Potter’s jaw, and his eyes and smile widen in appreciation. “Thank you,” he whispered.  
  
“I don’t know if you should be thanking me.” Potter had already removed his hands, and stood over to the side, looking distressed.  _Of course he did,_ Draco thought, barely refraining from rolling his eyes.  _A Gryffindor always would._ “I did that for you, not because—because it was professional or a good idea or anything like that.”  
  
“I know that,” said Draco, and spent a moment looking at his hands. “But you still did it for me, because I asked, and for that, I have to thank you.”  
  
He turned away and limped with some dignity towards the door of the room, conscious that Potter was still watching him. “Are you going to try and make peace with Mytherian?” he added over his shoulder.  
  
“I have to.” Potter sounded weary. “I have to, unless I want to ask for someone else to come and replace him, and that—wouldn’t look good.”  
  
 _No, would it?_ Draco thought, as he opened the door.  _You’ve sent away two people already, and now a third? Leaving me with one Auror where four were supposed to protect me? That wouldn’t look good at all._  
  
He was starting to suspect that the reports from his spy network of Potter’s inefficiency and incompetence hadn’t been lies after all. They had merely emphasized the wrong things. Potter had problems working with other Aurors, but not all of those were his fault. And he wasn’t incompetent, but he might look that way if you were only studying the results of his cases and had no other gauge.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Potter was saying, coming up behind Draco. “I just—I’ll do what I have to. I’ll make up with Mytherian, and—”  
  
A bright, consuming pain stabbed up Draco’s hand, making him cry out and shake it. It was a flare like white fire in the center of his palm, eating the skin, burning him, cutting into his fingers and up towards his arm.  
  
Potter yelled something. Draco was in no mood to listen to. He drew his wand and stabbed it again and again at his hand, trying to cast a spell that would ease the pain. It seemed impossible. The flames were steadily wreathing his arm, and each moment that passed, they hurt more. Draco had no idea what this was, no idea how to counter it.  
  
He knew he had dropped his wand, but he couldn’t really care. The pain was so  _intense._ He leaned his head against Potter and sobbed. Potter had hold of his hand, but if Draco didn’t know the countercurse or charm for a spell this Dark, then he thought it unlikely Potter would—  
  
And then the pain disappeared. Draco raised his head, blinking, and stared at his hand. There were strong cracks in the skin of his palm, trickling roast-red liquid that didn’t look like normal blood, but Potter’s wand traced the length of them, and they began to close and vanish. Draco started to shut his hand into a fist, but Potter shook his head and took out a length of soft silk.  
  
“Best to clean it off like this,” he explained, and swirled the silk gently over the center of Draco’s palm. “It can cause damage if you put it in contact with uncontaminated skin.”  
  
Draco shivered, and stared, and didn’t have to work fear into his voice to whisper, “What the hell was that?”  
  
Potter hesitated, as if he thought that Draco would give up the question. Draco turned his head and stared at him commandingly. He thought that was okay. Even his persona would be angered and troubled at a moment such as this, and he would certainly want to know what the spell was. If Potter knew how to fight it, then he must know what had caused it.  
  
“It’s goblin magic,” Potter finally said.  
  
Draco shook his head, in a daze. “I thought the goblins paid wizards to protect their treasure.” That was certainly what Jared had told him, he thought. Draco had wanted to know the names of the spells on the vaults, and that was what Jared had given him. He hadn’t acted as if the request was strange, the way he might if it wasn’t spells at all but something else that guarded the Galleons. And none of the spells he had named were unfamiliar to Draco, the way this was.  
  
Potter sighed. “We don’t know much about it. It can be cast from a distance, without a wand. The goblin has to have something of the target’s, but not hair or blood. It has to be knowledge. That’s not much of a problem for the goblins, since so many wizards have detailed vault information on file with Gringotts. They can reach across the miles between them, and only rare wards can defeat them.” He glanced at Draco with narrowed eyes. “What did you do to anger the goblins?”  
  
“Nothing,” Draco whispered, and shook his head. “I was deprived of so much of my wealth after the war…do you think I would want to anger the people who still guard the greatest part of it?” He shivered and bowed his head. “Maybe Greengrass-Rosier was going to propose robbing Gringotts. I think it would be like his arrogance.”  
  
Behind the façade, of course, his mind was racing, but there was no need to show Potter that. If goblin magic could reach out from a distance, past wards, that also explained how the owl had found him—although not why they had relied on an exploding scroll instead of something like this from the beginning. And that meant someone knew of his little talks with Jared, and maybe his plans.  
  
 _No, wait. The countdown makes sense, now. They want to keep my money and me as a client. They were warning me to back off, and trying to use less lethal traps until they became sure I wouldn’t. Only then did they use lethal magic._  
  
Draco had no doubt that particular goblin spell would have killed him. Which meant that he owed his life to Potter,  _again,_ after years of doing so. He sighed and shook his head.  
  
“What is it? Have you thought of some reason?”  
  
Potter’s voice sounded more penetrating than it had so far. Well, he might think that Draco was lying to him. Draco raised his head and let his limpid eyes and clear face do the work for him. Potter’s tone softened.  
  
“The goblins do sometimes hire out to wizards who want to eliminate their enemies through them, although mostly that’s rogues, not goblins that work for Gringotts.” Potter rubbed gently at Draco’s hand, the way he had yesterday when they were sitting in the library. “We know where those rogues are; the law-abiding goblins help us keep track of them. We could go right now and start investigating them, with good cause, if you’ll tell me why you think that they want to harm you.”  
  
But Draco wasn’t about to yield now. Not only did he stand to get some important amounts of money and magical artifacts out of Gringotts if he succeeded, he stood to get some payment from the goblins themselves, since he would take money from his own vault. And his name in the papers, and a good deal of sympathy, and more people who would realize the truth and want to trade with him contacting him. No way that he was going to tell Potter the truth, even when invited.  
  
Even though his eyes  _were_ beautiful.  
  
“I think you have to question Greengrass-Rosier,” Draco whispered, and shifted fretfully. His hand looked almost normal again, but he still remembered the incredible pain. “He’s the only one who could tell you what he was planning.  _I_ can’t tell you.  _I_ don’t know anything.”  
  
Potter continued to regard him for a few minutes, intently enough that Draco wondered if he suspected the truth and would try threats next. But then he sighed, shook his head, and stepped back. “I hope you realize that the only one you’re hurting is yourself, if you keep something secret.”  
  
Draco sniffled a little and looked up at him. “And I’m not hurting you? You don’t like me?”  
  
Potter’s face went through a few complicated changes. Then he said, as if he was trying to get the message of those expressions across aloud, “It’s complex,” and gave Draco a weak smile. “Shall we go and find Mytherian? Maybe my negotiation with him will go better if you’re there and he hears about the goblin spell.”  
  
 _No, you just have a miracle means of alienating other Aurors and you’re hoping that I can help you persuade him back around,_ Draco thought. He was coming to understand Potter far better than he had thought he would—or than would be required—both his strengths and weaknesses.  
  
But once again, what his real self would do and what his persona would do diverged. He gave Potter a tremulous smile and gathered up his hand. “Yes. I’ll come with you.”  
  
Sometimes, he did wish that he had chosen a different life, and the moment when Potter smiled at him with relief was one of those moments.  
  
But then he thought, again, of what he stood to gain. And the moment, like all moments similar to it, passed.


	6. Nighttime Patrols

The negotiation with Mytherian hadn’t gone better, much as Draco expected. Mytherian seemed distantly interested in the fact that Draco had been the victim of a goblin spell, but when he proposed putting more wards up, Potter shook his head again. “You know that we don’t have any tested wards that can withstand the effects of a goblin spell,” he said.  
  
“Then let’s use the experimental ones.” They were in one of the portrait halls deep in the Manor, although as usual when Draco had visitors, his ancestors had arranged to be elsewhere. The exception was Great-Great-Aunt-Eleanor, who stood in one corner of the frame behind Mytherian and rolled her eyes at everything he said. Draco couldn’t look at her much, because she would ruin his façade. Mytherian posed like a hero. “This is probably the best chance to actually use them, you know.”  
  
“The best chance to use something that could kill us, yes,” said Potter.  
  
Mytherian stared at him. “You only feel like that because  _I_ came up with them. You’d be enthusiastic about them if your little research friend had been the one who did!”  
  
“Unlike you, Hermione knows what she’s doing when she puts together new spells.”  
  
Draco, although he pretended to be absorbed in the reflections from the head of his cane, had to hold back an incredulous snort. Potter was an idiot, and deserved some of the pushback he was getting from other Aurors, if he handled them all like this. He could see what the core of Mytherian’s objection to Potter was. He really did assume that he knew best and he could override everyone else. And the way he defended his friends…  
  
Draco hoped he would never be so foolish. He respected his contacts and other people who had helped him achieve his comfortable position, and he made sure that people like Jared, the fools he tricked, were in no position to reveal Draco’s complicity without revealing their own.   
  
Potter was never going to get anywhere in life because he didn’t have even the most  _rudimentary_ political instincts.  
  
Right now, Potter was lifting his chin in that way he had, the way Draco remembered from Hogwarts, the way that was going to end up causing them both trouble sooner or later. “And she also gives me the background of those spells, so I can see and perform them for myself.”  
  
 _Mytherian won’t tell Potter where those spells came from or the incantations?_ That was an interesting new twist. Draco studied the buttons on Mytherian’s robe, which  _were_ more highly polished than the equivalents on Potter’s, and managed to keep from coughing. But it was hard.  
  
“You don’t need to know them,” said Mytherian. This time, the glare he gave Potter was more measured. “And yes, I  _know_ that I could have told them to you and didn’t. I wanted to see what would happen if you were forced to actually listen to and  _respect_ me. Instead of just turning your back and collaborating with those friends of yours and never anyone  _else_.”  
  
Great-Aunt-Eleanor was shaking her finger now. Draco wondered if Potter had noticed her. But when he chanced taking a sideways look at Potter, he found his face as grave and heroic as ever.  
  
“I didn’t need to know every detail, no,” said Potter. “But you admitted they were experimental and dangerous. After that, is it surprising that I wanted to know what they were?”  
  
Mytherian hesitated. It seemed as if he might be on the verge of reconciliation with Potter, something Draco wasn’t interested in.  
  
“Sirs,” he whispered, “is this going to lead to something? Can you protect me from the goblins’ magic or not?”  
  
Potter turned to him, opening his mouth to spout something reassuring, probably a lie. Draco cocked his head at him, and Mytherian spoke first.  
  
“We are  _trying_ ,” he said, with a bright little smile that didn’t fool Draco. Mytherian was on the verge of yelling. Probably at Potter. “I want to use magic that could protect you. But Potter won’t let me.”  
  
Draco looked anxiously at Potter, as if he was the sort to be fooled by that bollocks. Potter must think he was, because he shook his head and waved one hand. “If you would let me test it first and make sure that it doesn’t make things worse, then it would be fine.”  
  
“You have to trust me sometime.” Mytherian’s nose went into the air. “You can’t guard Malfoy by yourself.”  
  
“Maybe not. But I can call someone else in.”  
  
 _And what will that do to Auror confidence in you?_ Draco wanted to shake his head, but he knew better than that. He was barely supposed to be paying attention. He maintained a bland façade instead, with effort.  _It seems that most of them dislike you already. Are you going to just replace Auror after Auror until they come to the point where they’re not even going to answer your call?_  
  
There were still inconsistencies in the reports of his spies that troubled him, but now he understood something of the reason why. They didn’t know what to do with someone who led brilliantly alone but couldn’t work with other Aurors—and who perhaps only  _had_ attained a high position because of the favoritism that Mytherian attributed it to.  
  
“I don’t want to be in this situation anymore,” said Mytherian. For a moment, he gave Potter a single, intense look, as if waiting for Potter to realize that this was the moment when he should give in and plead for Mytherian to stay.  
  
Potter folded his arms.  
  
With a disgusted sound, Mytherian stalked out of the room. Draco turned his head, listening through the wards. Yes, Mytherian was leaving. The wards told Draco when he reached the edge, and when he Apparated.  
  
Potter lowered his head. He was shaking.  
  
Draco stared at him without much sympathy. For the sake of having his own way, Potter had stripped Draco of all the Auror guards that could have helped them both. Draco took a long second before he spoke, though, because the cringing man he played would hold back from questioning Potter too much. “Does that mean that I’m going to die?”  
  
Potter looked up at once and gave him a faint smile. “No. There are some spells I know that will let me stay up and get more nourishment from food than normal. We’ll protect you and lick this goblin yet.”  
  
Draco couldn’t resist. “We?”  
  
Potter hesitated, then said, “I meant you and me.”  
  
Draco reached out and patted Potter’s shoulder as if the verbal embrace pleased him, but inwardly, he wanted to sneer.  
  
 _Trapped in a house alone with Harry Potter, and someone lurking outside who wants to kill me. Dear Merlin._  
  
*  
  
Draco woke slowly, slowly enough that he felt the grasping threads of magic dissipating from his mind, and cursed as he opened his eyes. Someone had  _enchanted_ him to fall asleep. And it hadn’t been himself this time.  
  
And he thought he knew who it had been.   
  
Draco smiled grimly as he sat up.  _Is that your plan, Potter? I’m easier to guard if I don’t wander? You want to keep me asleep and maybe dig through my private papers?_  
  
Draco twitched his wand beneath his pillow, after one more quick look around to make sure that Potter wasn’t in the room, and whispered the spell that activated some of the internal wards. But they sang to him with the same steady, contented hum they always had, rather than the shrill ringing that would have indicated Potter had opened one of his safes or desks.  
  
 _Perhaps he’s after something besides papers._  
  
That was certainly plausible. Given his conflicts with his underlings and the way he’d confessed to sleeping with a victim in the past, Potter was no upstanding Auror.  
  
Draco smiled a little as he stood, although he doubted the smile was one Potter would have liked to gaze upon. Ways to seduce Draco? Dark artifacts that would prove Draco wasn’t as redeemed as everyone else thought he was? Some excuse to take Draco out of the Manor? Or perhaps he knew about Mytherian’s supposedly secret and experimental magic after all, and was ready to perform it?  
  
Draco slipped into the darkness with a tingling sense of adventure, guided by scrolls of silver and golden spells on the walls that no one else could see, but which lit up the night for him. He would find Potter, and steal a march on him. Potter might have put the sleeping enchantment on him to keep him in one place; Draco didn’t think for one moment that Potter suspected him of being dangerous enough to really interfere, or he would have done more.  
  
 _Let the hunt begin._  
  
*  
  
In the end, the soft brush of a foreign magical signature against his interior wards led Draco to the fireplace in the large sitting room. Potter was crouched in front of it, his head thrust into the flames.  
  
Draco paused, for a second, with his heart beating fast. Had Potter found out about Draco contacting Jared?  
  
Then Draco sneered to himself. He needed to stop being an idiot. Of course that wasn’t it. Potter would have been up to arrest him already, and Draco had never contacted Jared from this fireplace, anyway.  
  
He tapped his wand softly against one of the stones next to the door. The vibration ran through the wall and over to the fireplace and the stones around and above the hearth, bringing the words Potter was speaking to Draco’s waiting ears.  
  
“I don’t know what to  _do_ ,” Potter said, and his voice was thick with resignation.  
  
Draco didn’t recognize the voice that answered, but based on what it said, he knew it for another Auror. “You’ve only been there a few days.”  
  
“I drove Mytherian and Greengrass-Rosier away,” Potter admitted, hanging his head. “And I sent Crystal off. I mean, she was needed to provide testimony on Greengrass-Rosier’s attack, but…” He seemed to fumble for words again. “I don’t think I can do this alone.”  
  
“You can,” said the voice, and its rumbling, cheerful quality finally awoke echoes in Draco’s memory. This was most likely Kingsley Shacklebolt, which meant Potter was talking to a superior. Of course he was. He couldn’t hide his incompetence forever, and Mytherian had probably reported him. “You were right that Malfoy finds you intriguing. You were right that you can keep his attention.”  
  
 _What’s this?_ Draco cocked his head. It didn’t sound like they were especially concerned about his preservation from goblin magic at the moment. Or at least Shacklebolt wasn’t.  
  
“He doesn’t find me intriguing enough to confess more about that supposed letter he received from Greengrass-Rosier, sir.” Potter raised one hand as though to tug at his hair, and then seemed to remember he had his head in the fire. He lowered it again. “And as for any other secrets, like why the goblins blame him in the first place for a theft that didn’t happen, he’ll never tell me.”  
  
“You have my permission to do what’s needed.” Shacklebolt paused as if considering what that might mean to Potter’s limited understanding, and then elaborated. “ _Whatever_ is needed.”  
  
Potter stiffened a little. Draco cocked his head. From his position by the door, he could see everything of Potter’s body but the head, and honestly, that was almost more revealing than his words.  
  
“Sir,” Potter whispered. “Do you mean—”  
  
“I mean that you can use any form of magic or questioning or anything that’s not torture,” said Shacklebolt. “Anything that’s not immoral.”  
  
“Some people would say what I did with Athenore was immoral.” Potter’s voice had oceans of bitterness in it. Draco licked his lips, as if the oceans would leave their salt on his face.  
  
Maybe Potter would, if Draco asked nicely.  
  
“It wasn’t,” said Shacklebolt. “You know why. You went into it with full knowledge of what was coming, and it’s not as though you put him under the Imperius Curse. You seduced him, and he betrayed himself.”  
  
Draco’s drawing-in of breath was involuntary, but it didn’t matter, since Potter kept speaking anyway, and the sound of his words covered Draco’s little noise. “If you’re sure that you think—if it’s necessary—”  
  
“I think you will have to be the one to determine whether it’s necessary,” said Shacklebolt, and his voice was almost vicious. “You were the one who came up with the strategy for this case, Auror Potter.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes.  _Yes, and that makes you trust him because?_ It seemed that Shacklebolt either thought Potter needed a lesson, hence why he wasn’t sending him any more Aurors who might shield him from his mistakes, or he was blinded by hero-worship of Potter just as Mytherian had thought a lot of people were.  
  
Draco felt a sudden and intense sympathy for Mytherian. Not that he wasn’t an idiot in his own way, but at least he saw through Potter like Draco had been the only one to do when they were children.  
  
 _So. That last victim Potter slept with was under_ orders.  
  
Draco nodded a little. That didn’t mean he would refuse to participate in Potter’s little seduction game. There was the spice of intrigue, of danger, particularly now that he knew what was going on. There was the undeniable attraction to his man, and the violence and magic and unexpected sneakiness that he  _was_ good at.  
  
But there was no way he was going to let Potter win.  
  
Potter sighed. “If you insist, sir. I think that waiting for Malfoy to tell us the truth on his own would be preferable.”  
  
“And not an option we have,” Shacklebolt said, sharp again. “If what you think is going on is what  _is_ actually going on.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Potter. “I still hold by that opinion. I know it sounds crazy, but—”  
  
A sudden noise came from down the corridor, a sound like someone tripping and falling against one of Draco’s wards. Draco immediately spun out of the doorway, Disillusioning himself. He thought Potter would probably hear the sound and go investigate, and Draco couldn’t be found here when he did.  
  
As much for the sake of the game as for anything else.  
  
“There’s been a disturbance here, sir,” said Potter, sounding unturned, unharried, and professional. Draco wasn’t sure whether he liked that or not. On the one hand, he wanted an unruffled Auror guardian; on the other, Potter seemed almost as if he’d been expecting the noise, which itself gave Draco some disturbing ideas.  
  
“Then go and find out what it is,” said Shacklebolt, and Draco heard the quick, muffled sound that might indicate papers shuffling. “And remember to call me back when you can safely do so. I hope to hear some report of progress.”  
  
Even with an enemy potentially breaking through his wards, Draco had to grin. That sounded like a threat. Even Perfect Potter might not please his boss some of the time.  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Potter again, passionless for a second. And then he was running past Draco, so fast that Draco hadn’t even had time to cancel the spell that was letting him overhear Potter’s firecall. Draco shook his head once and ran after him.  
  
Potter headed straight for the window that the wards were now telling Draco was a weak point. Someone had come onto his grounds and got near enough to damage the glass itself. Draco swallowed a little, some of his exhilaration fading. Yes, well, it was  _bloody_ inconvenient if his enemy had managed to shrug aside his wards like that.  
  
He came around the corner in time to see Potter standing tall in front of the broken window, his wand stretched out in front of him. A steady stream of words came from him, an incantation so long that Draco shook his head and moved forwards. The enemy would break in while Potter was reciting a spell that long.  
  
The spell finished just as Draco was about to extend a hand to the window, though. Potter’s body flared with a silhouette of light around it, orange mostly but turning black at the edges. Potter held out his hand, smiling faintly, and his burning fingers passed straight through the broken glass with no ill effect.  
  
And they kept stretching. Draco could see a dark figure tearing across the grounds, but Potter’s hand flowed out, longer and longer, followed by his arm. The hand finally clamped onto the figure’s collar, and dragged it back across the grass, plopping it firmly onto the carpet inside the house, beneath the sill. The man whimpered in shock, his hands rising as if to cover his head.  
  
Draco had already seen his face, though, and it was almost enough to make him reveal himself right then. It seemed that his lie had come true, and now Elian Greengrass-Rosier lay nearly fainting on the floor.  
  
That didn’t answer the question of how a common Auror had got through his wards, of course. And Draco didn’t know if he  _could_ answer that question, if there was any answer. He just stared at Greengrass-Rosier and blinked a little, sometimes.  
  
“So,” said Potter, from the depths of his chest, in a growl that sounded as if he was talking to himself. “Malfoy was right.”  
  
That brought another, more minor revelation for Draco, as Potter bent down to shake Greengrass-Rosier awake.  _He didn’t believe me about the letter that I said Greengrass-Rosier sent. Or at least, not as much as I thought he did._  
  
Draco leaned against the wall and tapped his tongue thoughtfully against his teeth. He would have to go back to bed eventually, before Potter could come to wake him up, but he had a moment to ponder the situation.  
  
Potter was cleverer than Draco had thought. Capable of playing a more seductive game, and willing to treat it as a game if he was so ordered.  
  
Draco was a little annoyed, but mostly relieved. He was starting to think that Potter’s cleverness might be the only thing that actually saved him from the rogue goblins, or whoever was really stalking him.  
  
The annoyance remained, though. Tomorrow night, he would have to find a safe way of slipping away from Potter and contacting Jared.


	7. Odd Priorities

Ten minutes into the interrogation of Elian Greengrass-Rosier, Draco was once again unimpressed with Potter.  
  
An Auror should be good at all aspects of his job, as far as Draco was concerned. Potter had shown that he was good at defending Draco and sneaking around—much better than Draco had thought he was, to be fair. But now Potter was stumbling all over his feet during an interrogation, and what kind of Auror couldn’t handle that?  
  
 _The sort they sack,_ Draco thought, looking again at Greengrass-Rosier’s sneering face and then away. Knowing the man wasn’t his real enemy didn’t make this scenario much more comfortable.  
  
“I’ll try this one more time, Elian.” Potter’s voice was patient but strained, and he had his hands linked together behind his back, eyes glinting, as if he would like to punch Greengrass-Rosier, but didn’t dare. “Why did you come back to a place you’d specifically been warned away from?”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier laughed at Potter without parting his jaws. “As though you can command me. You only think you can.”  
  
“When I was your superior, in all senses of that word, then I could.” Potter altered his stance a little, and Draco, who was sitting in a chair behind Potter just in case Greengrass-Rosier managed to spring out of his ropes and use wandless magic, lifted his head. He thought Potter had just surpassed some sort of internal limit, and Draco might get to see  _real_ magic now. “Listen to me now, Elian. You have one more chance to answer without coercion.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier rolled his eyes. “You’re not allowed to use Veritaserum on someone who refuses it. You’ll get into more trouble if you do that than my confession is worth.”  
  
“I wasn’t thinking of Veritaserum.”  
  
The idiot finally seemed to hear in Potter’s voice the change that Draco had already heard. He frowned and glanced about as if he thought that someone might show up and rescue him. Draco thought that was more unlikely than Greengrass-Rosier springing out of his ropes and managing wandless magic. “You wouldn’t dare do to me what you did to Mugstrom.”  
  
“Why not?” Potter had been spinning his wand idly, but he put it aside now and moved forwards as slowly as a snake, his eyes tracing up and down Greengrass-Rosier’s body as though he was counting the number of bones in it. “I wouldn’t even need my wand for it. Then they can’t locate it with a  _Priori Incantatem_.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier pressed himself against the back of the chair. “That’s impossible,” he repeated, as if he thought that would get him somewhere when Potter had already proven that he ate impossible things for breakfast. “I saw the amount of damage. There’s no way that you could have inflicted that without a wand.”  
  
“My hands,” Potter said, and held them up, turning them back and forth. “And it’s not as if it couldn’t be fixed. It took the Healers a while, but I only left the bones I broke broken, not set them crooked on purpose. They could still repair them with magic. Mugstrom’s hands are as strong as ever now.”  
  
Draco tried to imagine Potter breaking someone’s hands with sheer brute strength.  
  
He found he could imagine it all too well. Potter was looming over Greengrass-Rosier, and he already had his hands spread as if he was going to grip and break individual fingers. As Draco watched, a ripple of strength traveled down Potter’s shoulders, and he bent almost tenderly towards his prisoner.  
  
“Don’t!” It was a squeal. Greengrass-Rosier was shivering now, and he had his hands tucked under his legs as though that would protect them. “Don’t—don’t hurt me!”  
  
Draco curled his lip in disgust. It was sort of embarrassing, how his “enemy” was a puling coward this way.   
  
“This is the way it is, Elian,” Potter said, his voice soft and lethal and low. “I’m running on so little sleep, since Mytherian abandoned me, that I might do anything. Anything at all to make things easier for myself. And you were creeping around the house, and Malfoy already named you as someone who was contacting him to rob Gringotts, and this is the end of enough.”  
  
Draco sighed faintly. He had hoped that his use of Greengrass-Rosier’s name could go unremarked for a little while longer.  
  
“I never did that.” Greengrass-Rosier looked startled for far longer than Draco thought at all reasonable; a moment later, his eyes focused on Draco and narrowed. “You little  _shit_.”  
  
He lunged against the ropes, which just went to show that some people had odd priorities. Draco moved back a little, because that was what his persona would do, but it took all his effort not to simply lounge in his chair and give this particular enemy a look of utter boredom, which was something that his real self would do.  
  
 _And past real selves._ Draco thought even his sixteen-year-old self, a twit if there ever was one, would despise Greengrass-Rosier.  
  
Potter took a quick step forwards, and Draco doubted it was a coincidence that it put him between their chairs. “Did you forget so quickly what I could do to you?” he asked, pushing on Greengrass-Rosier’s shoulder and giving him a sharp look. “Or who’s really dangerous to you here?”  
  
If he had forgotten it, it was clear that Greengrass-Rosier had just remembered it. He flinched back with a whimper harsh enough that Draco snorted a little.  _Yes, wonderful attempt to convince your rival that you’re a strong and fear-inspiring Auror._  
  
“I don’t,” Greengrass-Rosier whispered, and bowed his head. The corners of his mouth were twitching, from what Draco could see. He appeared about to burst into tears. “I’m  _sorry_. I’m sorry.”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “And so you should be, but it’s about three months too late. Do you think that I’ll let you go and reinstate you into the Aurors, because you can offer up an apology when you’re pushed to the edge of terror?”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier panted at him, or at least Draco thought that was what the odd noise was. Potter was standing almost with his chest pressed to Greengrass-Rosier’s face, and it was hard for Draco to see his expression.  
  
 _Maybe Potter wants to be intimate with everyone who challenges him._ Draco would be annoyed about that, but mostly for the things it said about his own taste.  
  
“You know what I came here for,” Greengrass-Rosier said.  
  
“Revenge?” Potter gave a smile that Draco could only see in profile, but even that was nasty enough to make Draco shift in his chair. He was just as glad that Potter seemed to have no concept of Draco’s real plans. He was suspicious of  _some_ things, but not the truth, or he would already have arrested Draco by now. “We can’t always get everything we want. And what was it revenge for? Only Malfoy’s not marrying your sister, or something else, something to do with a plan to rob Gringotts?”  
  
For a long moment, Greengrass-Rosier sat there with a drooping head and a silent mouth. Potter must have got tired of it, because he abruptly lashed out an arm and clouted Greengrass-Rosier on the side of the head.  
  
Finally, the man gave another squeal and started talking. “Yes, fine! I did write to him. I did offer to make him part of this plan. But he resisted, and—it was a good plan. He shouldn’t have resisted.” He tried to glare at Draco, but with Potter in the way, it was pretty much a futile effort. “He could have been rich,” Greengrass-Rosier muttered, and lapsed into silence again.  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows. Why would Greengrass-Rosier confess to something that he knew wasn’t true, no matter how Potter threatened him?  
  
But perhaps he was that scared of Potter. And perhaps Greengrass-Rosier really was the one that had been sending Draco the threats in the first place.  
  
After a moment of playing with that idea, Draco sighed and let it go. No, as attractive as that idea would make things, despite the problems it would solve, he needed a suspect who was intelligent, and Greengrass-Rosier wasn’t that.  
  
“It’s all right. We’ll catch them.”  
  
Draco blinked and looked up. Potter was focused on Draco again, reaching out with one hand as if he would actually cup Draco’s face. Draco moved his head backwards and gave Potter a nervous little smile.   
  
“Them? You think there was someone working with him?” He nodded at Greengrass-Rosier, who was staring at the floor and seemed to have given up on everything. “But I thought he said he was the one who did it!”  
  
He put enough whine in his voice to make Potter wince, but he only went on regarding Draco with a steady gaze.  _Reassuring Hero Gaze Number Two,_ Draco thought.  _Number One is reserved for the press._ “He can’t have been the one who used the spell that burned your hand,” Potter was continuing. “That had to be a goblin.”   
  
He turned around again, and took a long stalking step towards Greengrass-Rosier. “You weren’t working with a rogue goblin? Someone who turned on you when he realized that you were planning to rob Gringotts?”  
  
Draco wondered for a second if he could sell Potter on the idea that a goblin had also written to him and he’d only just now remembered it, but decided not to. Potter was playing a game of some kind, the way he’d been planning to seduce Draco for his own reasons. He was no innocent, and it would be good for Draco  _himself_ if he remembered it.   
  
“No,” Greengrass-Rosier said, and flinched a little, as though someone was poking him in the ribs with a stick. “No goblins.”  
  
“Why are you believing him?” Draco asked, and let his voice rise. “He could be lying! You could find out who’s hurting me, and then you could do—I mean, you could go arrest them and leave me alone in my own house!”  
  
Of course, his “slip” of the tongue got a sharp glance from Potter. Draco put his head down and shivered, innocent and guilt-ridden. Yes, of course, he was the put-upon innocent, the world was so horrible to him, Potter  _had_ to believe him!  
  
“I think that he’ll tell the truth now,” Potter said. “I didn’t actually show him what I did to Mugstrom, but that’s always a possibility if he tries to act up again…”  
  
He took a step forwards, and Greengrass-Rosier did another full-body flinch and frantic shaking of his head. “No, I promise, I didn’t!”  
  
“I do believe him,” Potter said. “But we can’t know for sure unless we get permission to use Veritaserum, of course.”  
  
“I didn’t think you had a problem breaking the rules,” Draco murmured, almost under his breath, checking his effect on Potter from under lowered eyelids.  
  
Potter caught his breath sharply, but he shook his head when Draco tried looking up with his heart in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I can’t, and I told you the reasons why.” He turned his back and walked over to Greengrass-Rosier, tilting the man’s head up with a wand to his cheek this time.  
  
Draco blinked and studied Potter’s back with more interest than he supposed was strictly necessary. Potter had certainly received Shacklebolt’s order to seduce Draco. Why would he hold back now? Greengrass-Rosier was broken enough not to notice the activity in the room, especially something as mild as mutual flirting.  
  
“But, are you sure—”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, and kept his back turned as he cast a spell on Greengrass-Rosier that made him slump unconscious against his chair. He turned around and studied Draco with a critical eye. “I don’t think you’ve been getting a lot of sleep yourself lately, have you? You should get to bed.”  
  
 _What, not going to ask about the spell you cast and why I broke it?_ But Draco rose obediently and reached for his cane.  
  
Potter was there in a second, handing it to him. Draco paused and glanced shyly at him. “Sometimes I wish you could stay here and take care of me all the time.”  
  
“Sometimes I wish I could, too,” Potter replied, with a strained smile. “I wonder if I chose the wrong career, if I should have been a Healer instead of an Auror.”  
  
“Then I wouldn’t be alive. That goblin spell would have killed me.” Draco dared to reach out and squeeze Potter’s wrist. “Please,” he breathed, “reconsider.”  
  
“I’ve given it all the consideration I will,” said Potter, with what Draco thought was brutality, and turned his back, walking over to undo the ropes around Greengrass-Rosier. Draco watched his back.  
  
“Did you really break someone else’s hands not using magic?” he asked, not sure why he chose that question out of all the ones circling through his head. Perhaps because he had to ask at least one, and that one was the most harmless.  
  
Potter went still for a second. Then he said, “Yes. I did.”  
  
Draco waited to hear more, some justification, sure that the Great Hero Harry Potter wouldn’t have done that without some, but Potter said nothing else. “It’s late,” he murmured, and slung Greengrass-Rosier over his shoulder. “You should go to bed.”  
  
“You didn’t ask him how he got through the wards,” Draco said, not moving. It was something he had been keeping in reserve, thinking that the way Potter asked it of Greengrass-Rosier would provide some clues as to what he was up to, but so far, zero clues had been provided.  
  
“I know that,” Potter said tightly. “When we took the case, the Aurors who originally came here and me, we were keyed into your wards so that we wouldn’t keep bumping into them. That exception should have been removed when I took Elian off the case, but it wasn’t. What it tells me is that someone in the Ministry didn’t do their job.”  
  
“Could someone in the Ministry be in league with my enemy?” Draco asked, intrigued by the idea. It would explain a few things, not least why they might have decided to send Greengrass-Rosier in the first place, and maybe why Potter was ignoring Shacklebolt’s orders.  
  
“I doubt it,” said Potter, but with a too-quick shake of his head and an avoiding of his eyes that would have roused suspicion in a Slytherin baby.  
  
At the moment, Draco didn’t intend to pursue it. He let Potter shepherd him into bed instead, content. He had done his share of infecting Potter’s mind for the evening.  
  
*  
  
Once again, Draco woke with some wispy strands of sleep breaking loose from the surface of his mind, and he hissed soft and deep, hoping Potter would hear the words as Parseltongue. What did he think he was doing, enchanting Draco to sleep  _again_?  
  
But when he turned his head, it was to see Potter slumped asleep in the chair beside him. Draco held still. He doubted that would have happened naturally, no matter how tired Potter was, and that didn’t leave a lot of options.   
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
The voice crackled and rasped up and down the walls, and set some small silver dishes on the mantel that Draco liked to collect to vibrating. Draco frowned. If his enemy cracked his plates, he was going to feel more contempt for them than he did already.  
  
“You know why I have come,” said the voice, and a large spiral of glowing yellow light began to twist into being in the center of the bedroom.  
  
Draco braced his hands more or less calmly on the bed, and shot to the side when the predictable curse came crackling at him. At the moment, preserving his persona’s tale of a bad leg wasn’t his primary concern.  
  
But instead of simply setting his bed afire or breaking the headboard or something else usual, the curse bounced off the headboard and came after him. Draco whirled into the fire-grate and away, and this time the curse didn’t even touch the wrong target. Instead, softly humming, the same color as the ball of light, it turned on a curve and came after him.  
  
Draco tried to leap over Potter. He didn’t really want the curse to hurt Potter, but if it came down to the sacrifice of one of them, he knew which he was choosing.  
  
But the curse wasn’t fooled by that, either. Instead, it ducked under Potter’s chair and met Draco head-on when he was trying to stand up and raise a shield.  
  
Pain flooded Draco, constricting his lungs, and when he looked down, it was to see the shadows of flames dancing through his skin. 


	8. Freed From Burning

The pain was so intense that Draco was losing things. He knew for a second what curse this was, or thought he did, but the knowledge slipped away, and he couldn’t retrieve it. And then he was suspended above the floor with spikes of agony striking through his convulsing limbs, and his fingers ached, and he didn’t know what to do next.  
  
“Malfoy!”  
  
Potter was awake and on his feet. Draco didn’t know how, because he didn’t think the spell would have allowed his lungs to function enough for him to yell. But he was grateful.  
  
Potter jabbed his wand towards the streamers of light that were wrapped around Draco, and began to murmur something. Draco lost the words, too, as his head sagged forwards and he felt something stab through his chest. It went between his ribs as though they didn’t exist, into nothingness and space. He was panting. He wasn’t panting. He didn’t know how to hold onto things, where anything was, in the midst of that spinning…  
  
“ _Now_.”  
  
Potter’s voice was so calm, so devastating, so sharp. Draco latched onto that one word, the sound of that voice he had once known so well, and used it to drag himself back from the darkness that wanted to consume him.  
  
Someone screamed. It wasn’t him. Draco’s pain had gone beyond screaming. But the pain lessened a little in that very moment, and he managed to force open his eyes and look around.  
  
The curse was screaming. It was spun out from Draco’s chest, with Potter turning his wand over and over in a cranking motion, as though he had the curse wrapped around an invisible pulley. He brought his hand down a second later, hissing under his breath like a teakettle.   
  
The curse thinned out and paled. Draco looked down and saw only a single streamer still sticking through him.  
  
He opened his mouth to panic. Because a single streamer still sticking through him, maybe impaling his heart, was still a  _big fucking deal._  
  
“Hush, Malfoy,” Potter said, and he said it between gritted teeth and with sweat still standing out on his forehead. He clasped his hands together and forced them down towards the floor. “I need you to be quiet so you don’t distract me.”  
  
 _Doesn’t your own talking distract you?_ But Draco had no idea what curse this was or how to survive it if Potter suddenly stopped winding it away from him, so he shut his mouth and was obediently still. Potter was muttering to himself again, shaking his head as though someone was trying to wrap the curse around  _his_ head in Draco’s place. Then he took a long, sliding step forwards, and hit his hands together.  
  
The light of the curse winked out. Draco looked down and realized the thing stabbing him in the chest had vanished, without his even being aware of it.  
  
Potter turned towards him with a tired smile on his lips. “There,” he said. “You need to sit still for a minute, and tell me where your Pain-Killing Draughts are.”  
  
“Lab, second floor, blue hinges on the door,” Draco began, and then sighed. Why was he falling into the trap of Potter’s mindset, when he knew perfectly well there were more efficient ways of doing things? “But you don’t need to go and fetch them yourself.”  
  
“The vials could break if I do a Summoning Charm with as much power as I’ve got—”  
  
“I have house-elves.”  
  
Potter’s face flushed up with vivid color. “Oh, right,” he said, as though he should have remembered that, and then turned and clapped his hands. Draco was glad he did. Summoning the right sort of authoritative clap might be hard right now, as tired as he felt. He let his head sag into his hands.  
  
A pop, and Draco heard the disturbed squeak of a house-elf a few seconds later. He smiled tiredly into his palms. It would probably start scolding itself any second for not having sensed the intruder in the house.  
  
Luckily, Potter took firm hold of the situation before that could happen. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Is being Hizzy, Master Potter!”  
  
Draco sighed as pain spread all through his chest and began to ache in his joints. At least Hizzy wasn’t the most hysterical of his elves.  
  
“Excellent name,” said Potter, which made Draco give him credit for more knowledge of how to handle house-elves than Draco had suspected he had. “Good. Your master needs help. Go to the lab on the second floor and fetch the strongest Pain-Killing Draught he has. You understood. Good. Go now.”  
  
Draco heard the small thunderclap of Hizzy’s disappearance, and then Potter turned and knelt down in front of him, resting his hand on Draco’s knee. Draco bent his eyes and blinked, dazed. “I could have given him the commands,” he whispered.  
  
“No, it really is best that you stay as quiet as possible.” Potter was calm, but there were wrinkles along the edges of his eyes that told Draco he was holding onto the calm in a forced way. “You see, that spell is designed to lead to effects that spread through your body faster and faster the more talking or other activity you do. A little talking like this, or breathing and blinking and moving your hands a little, is fine. But you shouldn’t do much else.”  
  
Draco swallowed, and forced himself to remain calm and loose, sitting there. He’d heard of spells like that before, and poisons, and he knew the effect would be greater if he panicked and his heart began to beat faster.  
  
“Is that goblin magic?” Draco finally forced his mouth to move and ask, using the smallest amount of words possible to make his point.  
  
“You didn’t recognize the curse?” Potter was studying him, eyes a little narrow and hand still resting on his knee.  
  
Not one to waste an opportunity, Draco forced a blush and moved his hand to cover Potter’s. “No.”  
  
“Interesting,” was all Potter said, but then Hizzy reappeared with the Pain-Killing Draught, and Potter grabbed it and drew the cork. He almost crammed the lip of the vial into Draco’s mouth, and if he had broken his teeth, then Draco was going to charge the Auror Department for the necessary healing spells.  
  
Draco swallowed, and felt a hardly-noticed hollow feeling that had been gripping the edges of his chest vanish. He sagged forwards, but didn’t let go of Potter’s hand.  
  
“That was goblin magic,” Potter said, and his voice was deep and gentle. “Now. I really want you to tell me the truth, Malfoy. Please? There’s no need to hold back. No  _reason_ ,” he corrected himself a second later, shaking his head. “The goblins have the impression that you’re trying to rob Gringotts, don’t they?”  
  
Draco had to agree that it seemed they did. He thought about confessing the truth to Potter—but it was a truth that would instantly get him arrested.  
  
No. He wanted the money. He wanted the boost to his reputation that robbing Gringotts would give him among people who knew the truth. He wanted the apology from the goblins that they would have to give when the Malfoy vault was “robbed,” and the extra money they would pay him as compensation.  
  
He wanted to win. The efforts of someone at Gringotts who had probably overheard his firecalls to Jared made it all the more tempting.  
  
“I didn’t recognize the curse,” Draco said, and looked over to the side, at the chair where Potter had been slumped. “But there were two spells, right? The one that put you to sleep as well as the one that attacked me? Maybe you should bring in some more Aurors. I can wait if you want to find some that you work with better than Mytherian or Greengrass-Rosier.”  
  
Silence. Draco looked at Potter and found him staring at the floor with his face flushed as red as Draco’s should probably be by now.  
  
Draco reached out and caught Potter’s chin, tilting his head up. “Hey,” he said softly.  _Merlin, his skin is really hot._ He hoped that Potter wasn’t catching a fever of some kind. That would be all they needed right now. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Yes,” Potter said, and swallowed several times. “Fine.” His voice was less than convincing, and Draco wasn’t surprised when he stood a second later and pulled back, pacing in a tight circle around the room. “Fuck, Malfoy. I’m so sorry. I’ve chased away the extra protection that could have spared you the pain from that curse.” He turned around and stared at Draco, dividing his gaze about evenly between his face and Draco’s supposedly bad leg. “Can you forgive me?”  
  
Draco wasn’t about to let this chance pass by. Because, while he might have to sacrifice Potter’s regard for the money—and he would, without a pause, if it came down to a choice between them—he wanted both. He’d played the game, he’d taken risks in the name of the game, he deserved to have what he wanted.  
  
It was one of the reasons he had started doing this in the first place, after all. To get back at the world that told him he deserved to have nothing nice after the war.   
  
He leaned back and caught Potter’s eye with a slow smile. “I can do that,” he said. “If you’ll do one thing for me.”  
  
“I’m not sure if I can strengthen the wards so that no more goblin magic comes in,” Potter began, sounding honestly regretful.  
  
“Get over here and kiss me.”  
  
Potter tensed all over, his expression shifting to miserable in the span of a second. Or maybe it went into deeper misery; Draco honestly wasn’t sure. “You don’t want me to do that. You don’t  _really_.”  
  
“Who told you that you weren’t desirable?” Draco made his voice soft and coaxing, the voice of someone sympathetic to other people’s plights. The voice of someone redeemed. “Come here, and I’ll show you otherwise.”  
  
Potter hesitated, and stared at him. Draco had the mad urge to tell him that he’d heard Potter’s conversation with his boss. Potter had protected his virtue, and protested like the lady Draco supposed he was. He could go ahead and kiss Draco now with a clean conscience.  
  
But Draco settled for looking pathetic and hopeful instead, and then folding in on himself. “It’s the leg, isn’t it?” he whispered. “Everyone tells me that they can get past it, but I haven’t had nearly as many offers to sleep with me since I hurt it.”  
  
“Malfoy…” Potter came to him halfway through the sigh, though, so Draco didn’t have to scold himself for looking needy when it didn’t work.  
  
Potter could  _kiss_. Draco leaned back against the chair, not needing to feign the weakness in his legs now.  _Fuck_. Potter had one hand confidently in place on Draco’s shoulder, his fingers stroking his collarbone, so warm that Draco ached. And the tongue in his mouth and the expert darting brushes against his cheeks made Draco long for more. He leaned forwards, and Potter gave a muffled noise and dropped to a kneeling position in front of him.  
  
“Oh,” Draco said nonsensically, breaking away. For a second he couldn’t remember why, because he wasn’t about to give a speech, but then he knew. For air, and to admire the sweet flush of Potter’s lips.  
  
He went back to taste them, but Potter put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “That’s enough,” he said.  
  
“Why?” Draco pouted again, and knew he was pouting, and knew how much of it was sincere. Potter watched him with worried eyes and  _didn’t_ know, though, so that made it okay. “You already kissed me once. Don’t you want to do it again?” He wound his fingers in Potter’s hair and brought him temptingly back in towards Draco’s face.  
  
“You have no idea what you’re playing with,” Potter breathed, his eye shutting.  
  
“I know that you’re a big, bad, dangerous Auror.” It was no problem to make his voice breathy. Draco arched his neck back, eyes fastened on Potter’s face. It was also no hardship to look at that face. Draco was glad for that much. He  _could_ have played the seduction game with someone ugly, but it would have meant a greater chance of betraying himself. “I like that about you. I like that you can save my life. I don’t blame you for being asleep. You already said that goblin magic crosses my wards without trouble—”  
  
Potter made a harried, desperate noise, and lunged at him. Draco opened his arms to welcome him, and Potter didn’t bear them both down to the floor only because the chair turned out to be depressingly sturdy.  
  
They rocked together, Potter pressed awkwardly close, chest into shoulders, mouth mashed against Draco’s. Draco was tangling his fingers through Potter’s hair, the hair on his head and at the back of his neck, and his hands were so busy, so  _full._ So was his mouth, and he had a wild wish to pull back and start kissing Potter at the corners of the mouth, just to see what they tasted like, what was different—  
  
Potter slid a hand down his chest, and then froze.  
  
Draco tried to speak, but his breath was such a series of wild pants that he couldn’t make himself understood for a long second. Potter just waited there while he did, the fine tremors making their way down his arm and causing his hand to scrape against Draco’s muscles in a light, maddening way.  
  
“You can’t stop now,” Draco whispered, and grasped Potter’s hand, and  _pulled_.  
  
Potter’s hand nearly got to where Draco wanted it, to where he needed it, before Potter curled his fingers and pulled his arm back. “You were just wounded,” Potter gasped, and slung his face into Draco’s shoulder, arms retreating to his shoulders, holding Draco tight. “You just—you could have suffered a lot more if you—hadn’t had that potion. I fell asleep and the spell came in.  _My_ fault.”  
  
 _Of course if Potter’s going to claim something, it would be blame,_ Draco thought in irritation, and tugged at Potter’s unmoving arms. The disadvantage of pretending to be so weak was that he couldn’t believably sling Potter around like he wanted. “Come on,” he whispered. “You saved me. You know you did. It could have been worse, but it wasn’t. Come  _on_.”  
  
The need was spectacular now, with Potter so close and their warmth burning so brightly, and Draco reached up and hooked his fingers into the collar of Potter’s robe, wondering if he could “accidentally” tear the cloth and let things take their natural course. Then he snorted. Things probably  _wouldn’t_ take their natural course, not with Potter’s level of guilt.  
  
“It could still be worse,” Potter said, and tore himself away from Draco.  
  
Draco let his head dangle to the side in frustration and closed his eyes. Potter would probably think it was some other emotion. Or he was free to think it was frustration. It was unlikely he would connect the frustration to the right source, anyway.  
  
“Potter,” he murmured. He didn’t know if he had the tone of voice right. It was just something he needed to say now, and he would say it and worry about consequences later.  
  
“Listen, Malfoy.”   
  
Draco opened his eyes and turned his head, but said nothing. He would pay exactly as much attention to this particular speech as Potter’s opinion was worth.  
  
“It wouldn’t be fair to you.” Potter was pacing back and forth over this, running his hand through his hair. Draco followed him with his eyes, and said nothing. “You have no idea how deep this runs. You’ve said it yourself, that I’ve chased off the other Aurors who tried to work with me. I’m handled it all wrong. I’m not going to do something that I  _know_ you would end up regretting, no matter what you may think right now.”  
  
“You’re making another mistake,” said Draco, and made his voice deep and smooth.  
  
Potter turned towards him, almost eager.  _Maybe he loves being blamed. Maybe he’s a secret masochist._  
  
“You’re making my decisions for me.” Draco shoved himself upright in the chair, but didn’t try to walk, not right now. He would probably forget the right angle for his leg, he was so angry. “I don’t  _like that._ I want someone who’ll respect me when I say that I want something, and refuse me only for good reasons.”  
  
“But having you regret it is a good reason!” Potter threw up his hands. “I’ve already brought enough chaos into your life by being an incompetent Auror. Are you really sure that you want me here to be an incompetent lover, too?”  
  
At least he was saying the words now, instead of seeking refuge in blushes and all kinds of other idiocy. Draco slid towards him, to the edge of the chair. “You don’t know that I’d regret it.”  
  
“I think I know more about—”  
  
Potter cut himself off, maybe seeing the dangerous glint in Draco’s eyes, maybe hearing the dangerous direction that his words could go in. Draco nodded, saying nothing for a second, and then extended his hand.  
  
Potter closed his eyes. Draco waited out this last, silent struggle.  
  
Then Potter came to him, and it was all the sweeter because Draco knew about that “secret” conversation he’d had with his boss, all the more interesting that Potter was trying to seduce him on orders and acting reluctantly against those orders when Draco knew that Potter knew this was all a sham, but Potter didn’t know that Draco knew that he knew.  
  
 _So sweet,_  Draco thought, and tilted his head back for the kiss.


	9. The Consequences of Yielding

Potter had Draco on his bed, which made Draco grateful for a single moment because it meant that he didn’t have to worry about which direction his leg was splaying or how to maintain the bad knee of his persona in a moment of passion.  
  
And then Potter pulled Draco's shirt off with a skin-burning whoosh and kissed him again, and Draco lost his focus, lost everything but what was happening.  
  
Potter kissed him on the lips, on the chin, on the neck, letting his beard stubble rasp Draco’s skin. Draco shivered in delight and grabbed Potter’s hair. Potter gave a quiet grunt. Draco raised his eyebrows, wondering how many of his own reactions he had been controlling before, refusing to let Draco see them for some reason.  
  
Then the thoughts blew away again, and Potter rolled him around so that he was on top of Draco, lightly but firmly pressing him into the bed, slipping his hands under Draco’s arse to cup and squeeze his cheeks.  
  
“You move fast when you make up your mind,” Draco whispered to him, and hooked an arm around his neck to pull him close for a kiss.  
  
Potter’s eyes flared open. “We can stop if you want,” he offered, and shifted his knees for a second like he was going to get up.  
  
“Never,” Draco said, and rolled him a little to the side—not that he didn’t like Potter on top of him, but what he could reach this way was limited. He undid Potter’s own robes, and pushed them back to get his hands under the shirt.  
  
“ _Ah_ ,” said Potter, a simple sound of pleasure, and bowed his head and extended his arms so Draco could get his shirt off more easily. His eyes were bright and soft, and he was kissing Draco again a moment later, his chest and shoulders this time, as though having bare skin there himself was enough to make him want to kiss it on someone else. Draco’s eyes crossed when Potter found his nipple and sucked it.  
  
“Come on, come on,” Draco found himself chanting under his breath, without knowing why he was chanting it, and he let his legs fall open and looked up at Potter expectantly.  
  
Potter nodded as if in response to an imperative, and then tugged Draco’s trousers and pants off with the same motion. He was shedding his with little kicks, so practiced that it was enough to make Draco wonder how often he had done this.  
  
That thought brought up emotions he didn’t want to feel. He kissed Potter on the mouth to distract himself, and Potter bent down and they did some serious snogging for a minute before Potter went back to undressing him.  
  
“You want to fuck me?” Draco offered breathlessly. It wasn’t an offer that he made a lot, but Potter’s hands were confident and expert, and Draco thought he would not only escape pain but get a lot of pleasure out of the deal as well.  
  
Potter closed his eyes for a second. Then he opened them and shook his head. “No. I just want to see you completely bare.”  
  
 _His bloody conscience.  
  
_ Draco smiled, a thin, twisting serpent of a smile that he made as seductive as he knew how, and spread his legs some more. “Whatever you need to get you in the mood,” he whispered. “I want you any way I can have you.”  
  
That made Potter hesitate and give him an anguished look. Draco gave him nothing back except a mouth full of teeth, and then of tongue when Potter kept lying there and Draco had to kiss him again to get the show back on the road.  
  
Luckily, Potter’s hands were more than skilled enough to position Draco how he wanted him, which was lying on the bed with his legs fully spread, enough that they ached a little. Draco tilted his head back and sighed dramatically as Potter began to suck him. That reduced a little of the arousal that was almost pain in his cock.  
  
But only until he looked down and saw Potter’s black head bobbing between his legs, his cheeks and jaw narrow with determination.  _Determination to get me off,_ Draco knew.  _And not lose his heart at the same time.  
  
_ Draco reached out and gripped Potter’s hair, and this time there was no doubt about it. Potter moved a little towards his hand and moaned, something that made Draco’s mind sheet red with pleasure and his hips arch before he thought about it.  
  
When he recovered enough that he could think about something other than what was happening between his legs, he twisted about and hooked his thighs tight around Potter’s neck. Potter stopped moving right away. Maybe that was down to Auror instincts, too; Draco didn’t know.  
  
“You like having your hair pulled,” Draco whispered, keeping his voice deep and dark, the way he knew some of his other lovers liked it. “Maybe someone else doesn’t. Maybe someone found out and didn’t like it, because it didn’t fit their image of the perfect hero in bed with them. But I don’t need you to be a perfect hero.” And he sank both hands deep this time, and shoved Potter’s head back onto his dick.  
  
Potter gave a noise that might have been a sob, and went back to licking and sucking. Draco let his head flop back, but never let the strength in his hands falter. He yanked Potter from side to side, and drew him down punishingly hard when the motion of his tongue lapsed. Maybe he was stopping to breathe. Draco didn’t know. He  _did_ know that Potter was more than strong enough as both a wizard and a fighter to pull back and free himself if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He kept himself there and let himself be kept there, and his fingers were digging hard enough into Draco’s thigh that Draco knew they would leave red marks at the very least, if not actual fingerprints.  
  
“You like this,” Draco whispered again. It was the only thing that would come out of his mouth when he was squirming on the bed and lifting his hips and trying not to let himself come. “Really like it. You want it. You want me to do this,” he repeated, almost mindless, knowing he was mindless, and dragged his nails up Potter’s scalp.  
  
Potter jolted and sucked harder than ever, so hard that he was coughing a moment later. Draco didn’t care about that, because he was coming. The wash through him was so sudden and so intense that he didn’t have any time to warn Potter. Maybe that didn’t matter anyway, because Potter kept up with him, swallowing almost convulsively.  
  
In the end, Draco let his head fall back and his eyes close. He was vulnerable, for the moment, but the trembling and weakness in his limbs was delicious. He stroked Potter’s head, a little puzzled that Potter didn’t immediately move up beside him and demand that Draco suck him, but pleased with it, too. Maybe it meant Potter was still recovering from what he had just done, in a  _good_ way, without indulging his insecurities.  
  
Then Potter did stir, and Draco reached down and casually wound a finger in a piece of hair when Potter tried to move away.  
  
“What do you want?” Draco whispered. “My hand, or my mouth?”  
  
Potter shook his head. He was looking at the floor. Draco frowned. It would be irritating if the insecurities reared their heads  _now_ , when Potter had just got Draco off.  
  
“You must want  _something_ ,” said Draco, and he really didn’t care if his voice was petulant. He thought his persona might be more petulant about not having a chance to satisfy his lover than his real self, actually. His persona was timid and generous and would be hesitant about sharing himself with someone on a case. He yanked at Potter’s head again. “Come on. What is it?”  
  
Potter turned to face him, and Draco understood then. His face was bright red as he bit his lip, his eyes overbright, the face of someone who was sated and thought he shouldn’t be.  
  
“You don’t need to do anything,” Potter whispered, and then shook his head as if the wording of his own response disgusted him. “I—I got off.”  
  
 _From me pulling his hair?  
  
_ That was it. It had to be it. And it made Draco hungrier than he had been, though not so much for the taste of Potter’s skin or mouth as just for him, to be able to hold him and not have him pull away.  
  
He drew Potter down on the bed again, ignoring the way Potter thrust a hand against his chest as if he wanted to be free. He kissed Potter, languidly, and persistently, until Potter stopped flailing his tongue around and began to kiss back. Draco kissed until his lips were numb, and then rolled and pulled Potter over with him, slipping a hand down to the prominent wet patch on Potter’s groin.  
  
“You don’t have to be ashamed of that,” he whispered, because his lips were stinging now instead of numb and he  _could_. “Who told you that you ought to be ashamed of that? Who made you not want to talk about it?”  
  
Potter twitched his head against Draco’s chest. It took Draco a second to realize that Potter wasn’t pulling away, that he was shaking his head instead. “It doesn’t matter,” Potter said. “Really,” he added, when Draco made a little strangled sound of his own. “I have these stupid ideas that have nothing to do with you.”  
  
 _But I want them to have to do with me._ And Draco did. He reached out and swept a restless hand up and down Potter’s arms. “But it seems you were just so embarrassed. I think it’s—” He spent a moment debating the word, and then finished up with, “It makes me burn.”  
  
“ _Really_?”  
  
The way Potter twisted his head made Draco sure he was right, and someone  _had_ told Potter that the way he liked to have his hair pulled was weird. “Yes,” he whispered, and kissed him again, drowning the words with the hot taste of his tongue in Potter’s mouth. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to get you off in other ways,” he added, when he finally pulled back. “But it makes me hot to know that you came from that. I  _made_ you come.”  
  
Potter looked like Potter again, or the determined Auror that Draco had come to know, as he raised himself on his elbows and looked down at Draco. “You ought to be careful what you wish for, Malfoy. It sounds like you’re claiming an authority over me that you don’t have.”  
  
“An authority I can’t have,” Draco agreed, remembering the timid way that his other self had approached Potter. “But I still want it.” He once again kissed Potter, hoping that one or the other of them would stir back to life.  
  
He was still limp when Potter drew back from the kiss, though. “It’s sweet of you to talk that way, but I still failed you,” he whispered, holding his hand against Draco’s lips when Draco tried to protest. “Falling asleep like that.” His face was so red, and Draco thought it was with more than the fire brewed between them.  
  
“You couldn’t help it,” Draco said. “It  _was_ a sleep curse.” He had no doubt of that. The goblins wouldn’t have risked sending in their magic unless they’d also taken care of Potter, since he’d already proved that he understood their magic and knew how to counteract it.  
  
Potter buried his flushed face in Draco’s shoulder and muttered something that sounded like, “You’re being awfully forgiving.”  
  
“I lived,” said Draco, and tightened his hold on Potter’s hair again. It was simply so fascinating to have something that he could do and Potter would melt, like that. Draco could envision other people doing that, but not Harry Potter. Then again, Potter had been a surprise from pretty much the moment he walked into the Manor. “You’re the only one who can actually recognize these spells and defend me from them. I forgive you or I don’t live.”  
  
“Right,” said Potter, and it seemed that he sighed it out. He followed Draco’s tug on his hair a second later, and gave him a direct look. “I’m not going to get it up again tonight. I’m not some monster of stamina.”  
  
“You’re full of stamina in other ways,” said Draco, and looked into Potter’s eyes as he kissed his nose. “You’ve been a fighter and a healer and a lover all in the same space of an hour.”  
  
Potter’s return smile was unhappy, and Draco made soothing noises and touched the back of his neck while inwardly rolling his eyes.  _He already sucked me off. He’ll sleep with me tomorrow. I fail to see why he’s still upset about it.  
  
_ “Go to sleep,” said Potter softly, and rolled towards the edge of the bed. “I’ll—clean up, and then keep watch some more.”  
  
“Oh, no,” said Draco, and dragged Potter close again, ignoring the way his breath stuttered in surprise. “Goblins can’t attack right away again with a spell that powerful, can they?”  
  
Potter paused. “How did you know that?”  
  
Draco shrugged. “I noticed the length of time between this spell and the last one that pierced the wards. I think they would have sent another one after me if they could have, but they didn’t, which suggests to me that they can’t. Am I right?”  
  
Potter gave him such a careful, patient stare that Draco wondered if Potter was waiting for him to confess to greater knowledge than he had. But Draco would never do something like that, so he only widened his eyes and waited.  
  
“Yes.” Potter gave in with the word at last, and leaned his head down next to Draco’s. “They have to prepare rituals—or, well, we would understand them as rituals. They  _are_ spells, but they take a long time to cast. And they have to bring up new chanters to replace the ones who get tired and have to stop, and do all sorts of, oh, complicated things. So there won’t be another attack tonight from that direction.”  
  
“Then you can rest with me,” Draco told him, and put a possessive hand in the middle of Potter’s sweat-slick back.  
  
“It doesn’t mean that an attack won’t come from another direction, though.” Potter shifted restlessly against him. “And I already failed you once.”  
  
Draco could still feel the heat against his cheek from where Potter flushed, and shook his head so that Potter’s head moved back and forth with his. He really was embarrassed about not waking up the minute the curse erupted into the room. “It’s all right, Potter. I understand. And you can stay here and rest with me.” He lowered his voice into a return of the scared little squeak that the man he pretended to be would give. “Please? I don’t want to be alone in this bed.”  
  
Potter gave in, of course, the way Draco had known he’d have to. And it did feel good to drift off with Potter’s arms lapping languid around him, and Potter’s breath slowly settling with his, merging with his, so that it took an effort of will for Draco to suspend himself over the dark drop into sleep without actually falling.  
  
But he managed it, and there was no sign that Potter noticed when Draco slowly slid his hand beneath the pillow, grasped his wand, and brought it out. Nor, despite the sensitivity of his scalp, did he stir when Draco rested the wand beside his ear.  
  
“ _Somnio_ ,” Draco whispered, and listened as Potter’s breathing became even deeper, steadier. He shook his head, smiling. Potter had exhausted himself putting Draco to sleep, and interviewing with his boss through the fire, and catching Greengrass-Rosier, and saving Draco, and having sex. He deserved to have a good night’s rest.  
  
And the best thing was, as long as Draco was quick, there was no reason for him to suspect that there had been a spell at all. He could wake up in Draco’s arms and think it was a combination of satisfied desire and real need that had driven him into slumber.  
  
Draco edged softly out from beneath Potter and stood up, stretching. Then he gathered his clothes, and made sure to fake a limp on the way out of his rooms and towards the stairs, on the off-chance that Potter had resisted the spell.  
  
He had a potentially traitorous half-goblin to contact.


	10. Observing the Observer

Draco stroked his chin and gave the fireplace a hard smile. He wasn’t surprised that his call for Jared had gone unanswered. If Jared knew that Draco was after him, he wouldn’t come to the Floo. If the goblins who were sending these curses after Draco had caught him, they wouldn’t  _let_ him come to the Floo.  
  
But Draco had his own ideas about the kind of things that were appropriate for a co-conspirator of his, and he didn’t intend to give up yet. He cast another handful of Floo powder into the fire and murmured, “Raven’s Crossing.”  
  
The flames did something complex and dark that made them sway back and forth. Draco waved an impatient hand. This always happened. Killian’s sense of the dramatic.  
  
There was a long pause before the face of Ernest Killian appeared in the flames, framed by a fall of chestnut hair that Draco had found attractive, in the days before Potter came into his life. His eyes were blue, although not a particularly striking blue. Draco held his gaze and raised his eyebrows.  
  
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Killian, and shook his head. “You know as well as I do that you can’t make me any more indebted to you than I already am.”  
  
“I could always save your life again,” Draco said sweetly, and watched as Killian grimaced. “How would you like to clear up a little of the debt you owe me?”  
  
Being Killian, he watched Draco with a distrustful face and didn’t move. Apparently he thought Draco should already know when he was interested, and not make him say it.  
  
Draco laughed aloud, and nodded. “If you want to be that way, be that way,” he muttered. “I was planning a strike with the help of a half-goblin named Jared Mirrormask. He’s stopped responding to me, and I have goblin magic attacking me through my wards. I need you to find out what happened to him.”  
  
“Rather stunning to hear the master thief admit any sort of  _need_ ,” muttered Killian, but his eyes were already distant, thinking, and his heart wasn’t in the barb. Draco knew he would have still been reeling otherwise. “Very well. I presume that he works at Gringotts?”  
  
Draco nodded. “And he lacks self-confidence. Even if someone found him and told him that I was only using him for his connections and his knowledge of the bank, then he would probably be more crushed from that, not less, and easier to appeal to.”  
  
Killian sniffed. “I’ll need a little more information than that. What clan does his goblin parent come from?”  
  
Draco snorted back. “He says that his mother never knew. Apparently she took a goblin as lover and found it ‘mysteriously exciting’ not to look into his background.”  
  
Killian paused. Then he said, “Malfoy, you fool.”  
  
Draco closed a hand into a fist down by his side, but made himself respond mildly. He didn’t deserve to be called a fool by a fence who had once taken poisoned jewels to trade, but he would keep that to himself for now. “What are you talking about? I had the story from Mirrormask himself. Mirrormask is his mother’s name, by the way.”  
  
Killian shook his head hard enough that his hair whipped around his face as if in a windstorm. “He wouldn’t be working in the bank if no one knew who his father was. They only give positions like that to half-goblins whose clan lineages they know, to keep an eye on them and see if any likely talents emerge in them.”  
  
“Not likely, with this one,” Draco said, but his attention was caught. “If he’s valued, he never told  _me_.”  
  
“He might not know it himself, if they’re observing him from a distance and seeing how he turns out. But you should have known that, Draco. Goblins are all about clan, even for their half-blood kindred.”  
  
Draco shifted. He still didn’t like being told he was stupid, even if the person doing it might have been some justification for it. Even if the person doing it was related to him, or a lover. He pictured Potter doing it, and that image was painful.  
  
He kept his voice restrained, though, because getting upset when he could do nothing was truly stupid. “Tell me if you can help me or not, Killian.”  
  
“I should be able to, if you give me a day.” Killian reached a hand up and toyed with his hair, as if he wanted to call Draco’s attention to it, and make him envious. Draco refused to shift his demanding posture, and Killian sighed hard enough that it would have hurt Draco’s throat if he tried it. “Fine, fine. Half a day. But you’ll have to firecall me back later today, or be able to accept an owl.”  
  
“I can do that.”  
  
Killian squinted at him, and made an attempt to look sly for the first time in the conversation. “Even with those Aurors you have staying with you?”  
  
Draco lifted his chin and felt something inside him freeze and crack. “What would you know about that?”  
  
“That you were receiving death threats, and had Aurors over to stay with you.” Killian’s lips barely moved, but Draco knew from the shine in his eyes that he was enjoying this. “That you had finally met some threat too great for you to handle. And I wonder what it was from? If what you told me is true, then I wonder if it’s because you didn’t do more research on goblins. How  _interesting_.”  
  
Draco held up his hands. “Next time, I won’t underestimate them. And next time, I won’t bother saving you when you’re dangling over a drop because of your own greed.”  
  
Killian’s eyes narrowed, and he vanished from the fire. At least Draco knew he would keep his word about sending the information. Killian owed Draco too much, and hated the owing of the debt too much, to be slack about that.  
  
Draco sighed, and stood, and made sure that no revealing dust from this distant room clung to his robes. Now it was time to go back to bed, and he hoped he could spend some time with Potter the next morning that would ease the memory of what he had gone through today.  
  
*  
  
But it wasn’t to be. Although Potter showed no sign of knowing that Draco had cast a sleeping spell on him, he avoided Draco’s eyes and kept blushing in a tiresome way, and Draco sat down to breakfast thinking with relief of the end of the case, when Potter found the goblins who had been bothering him, or Killian did, and Draco could go back to his normal thieving life.  
  
“Oh,” Draco said, and looked up. He pretended that the question had just occurred to him, although he had been really waiting for an appropriate time to ask it. “Did you remove the exemptions from the wards that Greengrass-Rosier had?”  
  
Potter nodded at him grimly. “The Ministry did that the minute I took him back into custody there. I’m the only Auror who can get inside now.” His eyes flicked from wall to wall as though he was thinking of the other people or creatures who might get past the wards, and he frowned vividly.  
  
“You’re the only Auror I want inside,” Draco said in a voice he made as sultry as he dared. Any hotter might make Potter bolt from the room. Draco looked at him with a melting smile from under his eyelids.  
  
Potter fumbled at his glasses for a second and made a sound like  _erk_. “Of course,” he said, and then coughed and cleared his throat. “I’ll go and patrol around the wards and make sure that the goblin spell from last night didn’t leave any scorch marks there, shall I?”  
  
He bolted from the room after all. Draco sighed and leaned back in his chair. Scorch marks on the wards, indeed.  
  
Another owl appeared above, an unfamiliar tawny one, soaring towards him.  
  
Draco drew his wand. It was true that this might be the bird bearing the promised information from Killian, but it also might be another one with a spell that could destroy him. He used a Capture Box Charm, which made a brilliant box of blue light form around the indignant owl, to stop it well short of him. Then he Summoned the message from its beak, making the owl shriek and batter its wings against its prison.  
  
Ignoring it, Draco examined the letter, and astonished himself with a thin smile. It was from Killian, and it was quick work indeed. Draco broke the seal, generously deciding that he would forgive two life-debts instead of one.  
  
There was a genealogy in the letter, one that showed Jared Mirrormask’s name connected to a goblin called Breakrock. And his father’s clan was Shatterstone. Draco shook his head after searching his memory for a moment. No, the names meant nothing to him.  
  
But Killian’s note, written at the bottom of the genealogy, did.  
  
 _Malfoy, whatever you’re attempting, back off. You have no idea how powerful the Shatterstone clan is, or how miserable they can make your life._  
  
“I might,” Draco muttered, winding the letter into a tight roll of parchment. “I might.”  
  
“What’s that you have there?”  
  
Draco couldn’t deny that Potter’s coming back into the dining room like that had startled him, but he managed to turn around and, he thought, play it off well, fluttering and simpering at Potter. “A message from someone who wanted to warn me about the goblins.”  
  
“Then someone else might know where the problem is coming from? Which rogue goblin it is?” Potter was prowling towards Draco with a delicacy that made Draco laugh a little, so unwarranted was it. Of course Draco was going to tell him everything the way his persona would.  
  
Or at least he was going to tell him every bit of the invented story that he had thought of to account for this situation.  
  
“They said they could tell me the clan but nothing else,” Draco said, and held open the parchment in front of him, tapping his wand against it. The letters whirled and scrambled, then unfolded into the words that he wanted them to form. That was a useful spell he’d learned his first year of being a professional thief. He drooped a little at Potter’s expression. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t have been able to read the original anyway. It was in code that was spelled to bedazzle the eyes of anyone except me who tried.”  
  
Potter accepted Killian’s letter without speaking, and scanned it through. Draco leaned back in his chair and watched Potter with what he knew came off as anxious hope, instead of amused contempt.  
  
Potter was so many contradictions all at once, Draco thought. A good Auror, but someone who found it impossible to get along with other Aurors. Someone who could come up with a plan of seduction aimed at someone he suspected, but then balk at implementing it. Someone who enjoyed a certain kind of roughness in bed, but blushed so much that Draco wasn’t sure how much enjoyment  _he_ had got out of it. It was so strange, and Draco didn’t know exactly how to classify him. He supposed that Potter might have an easier time of it. Draco’s persona wasn’t deep or hard to manipulate.  
  
Then Potter abruptly crushed the parchment in his fist and stared at Draco. Draco blinked back, not sure what Potter was doing, or what he had done to earn that look.  
  
“ _Shatterstone_?” Potter whispered. “You’ve angered the Shatterstone clan?”  
  
“That was what the message said,” Draco muttered, and let his eyes widen innocently. “What is it?”  
  
“Shatterstone is one of the most powerful goblin clans,” Potter said, and began to pace back and forth, dumping the crumpled letter on the table. Draco surreptitiously picked it up, smoothed it out, and stuck it back in his pocket. There was information on there about Jared’s genealogy that he might want later. “They control so many of the deep places that they undermine almost all the places where other goblins live. You have to give respect to someone who can attack through your floor at any second.”  
  
“I didn’t think goblins were much for mining,” Draco said, and allowed his persona’s confusion to blend with his real personality’s. “I mean, I always heard that they just looked to keep gold and silver and copper, not actually dig it up.”  
  
Potter shot him a keen look, as though he had heard the change in the persona’s voice. But if he was that sensitive and successful an Auror, he would have arrested Draco already, Draco thought. He maintained his innocent expression, and Potter turned away from him with a small snort and went back to prowling.  
  
“That’s not what I meant. Undermine as in be  _beneath_.”  
  
“It still sounds like mines to me,” Draco retorted, and let himself pout deliciously, curving his hand beneath his chin. Not many of his other lovers in the past had been able to resist him when he did that. He thought Potter would probably find himself caught in the same trap.  
  
Incredibly, Potter didn’t even look at him, just waved what seemed like an irritated hand and went back to pacing. “Again, not what I  _meant_. The goblins rely on status that comes from working with money, but that’s only some of them that we see. Other goblins stay home and tend the clan caves. The deep places, that’s what they call them. Caverns leading all the way down to where there’s only lava instead of rock.”  
  
“But the world can’t really be like that,” Draco said, something he had read long ago coming back to him. “Not full of caves. It’s solid. Otherwise houses would be falling into the holes all the time.”  
  
That got him another sharp glance, but this time, Potter answered without pausing. “No, they wouldn’t. Not when the goblins carve out and support their caves with magic of their own. I told you their spells take a long time, but they  _live_ a long time. When it’s something that doesn’t have a particular time limit, like carving out the caves where they live and expanding them and guaranteeing their safety, they’re going to put in all the days, weeks, months, years they need.”  
  
“What’s the significance of the Shatterstone clan?” Draco asked, deciding that he would be better off pursuing that line of inquiry. Sometimes, it was a pity that his persona was so stupid, as it limited how much he could expect to get done with one question.  
  
“They’re the ones who first went down and carved solid stone into caves,” Potter said, and paced in another complete circle before he continued. “Thus the name. The earth did used to be like what you were talking about, but they made it into a honeycomb of tunnels, in so many places. And thus they get the honor of living the deepest, and controlling the most territory, and having the most prestige.”  
  
Draco cocked his head thoughtfully. He wondered how a goblin from that clan had even had cause to sleep with a human and produce Jared. It sounded like they would stay in their caves all the time and avoid contact with the people on the surface.  
  
“Not all of them stay there, though?” he asked, because Potter was pale now. “Or  _do_ they stay there? And that’s the reason that you can’t stop them, because their spells are taking place in those deep caves where we can’t reach them?”  
  
“That’s not the reason,” said Potter. “Some of them do come to the surface. But those spells are the more powerful because there are more goblins willing to help them, just for the prestige of saying that they’re the ones working with the Shatterstone clan.”  
  
Draco was silent, thinking. He wondered what he could say that would counter the fear on Potter’s face. He wondered if he should be more afraid himself. Both Potter and Killian seemed to think he should be.  
  
Then again, Killian thought that he was stupid in the first place for interfering with the goblins, and Potter knew nothing about thieving and wouldn’t be sympathetic to Draco if he did. Draco couldn’t really trust their opinions.  
  
“Draco,  _please_ tell me the truth.”   
  
Startled, Draco looked up. Potter was kneeling on the floor in front of him, and his eyes were wide and his hands outstretched. Draco tried to shake his head, but he was left without words—and not only because Potter had called him by his first name—as Potter went on.  
  
“I know that something else is going on. Some contact with the goblins that you haven’t told me. You  _have_ to tell me, no matter what it is. You could have insulted them, and Shatterstone will kill for that where the other clans wouldn’t, because they think that their dignity is the most important thing they have and it’s greater than any other clan’s. Or maybe Greengrass-Rosier did write you that letter and they tracked you down somehow, but I think it’s more than that. It  _has_ to be. They haven’t sent any ward-breaking spells after him, and he was the primary instigator. Please, tell me.”  
  
Draco hesitated one moment. If anyone could have persuaded him to tell the truth, it was Potter.  
  
But then what would happen? Potter would only arrest him and take him away, and while he might be safe behind Ministry wards from the Shatterstone goblins—he doubted it, though—he would lose his freedom and his chance at not only the Gringotts money but any kind of a normal life.  
  
He put on his weakest smile and shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Sorry, Potter. Harry,” he added, when Potter stared at him as though Draco had crushed his dreams. “I’m trying, but I really can’t think of anything. Sorry to be disobliging.”  
  
Potter stood up with his eyes closed and turned his head away. He walked out of the room. Draco watched him go, and wondered whether he would have let Potter’s plea move him to honesty, if their past had been different.  
  
Probably, though?  
  
 _Probably not. Because that’s the way things are._


	11. Shatterstone's Outrage

“I can’t help you if you won’t tell me anything.”  
  
That was what Potter said, his head bowed over the teacup in front of him. Draco sniffed a little. Potter had made his own tea, or perhaps brought it and had the house-elves make it. The smell was thick, and Draco wasn’t sure that he would want to taste it.  
  
“I’ve told you as much as I can,” said Draco, and let himself shrink and whine, only partially because his persona would do that and partially just because that was the sort of mood he was in. “I’ve told you about the letters, and the warnings. What else can I do? There’s nothing else to tell.”  
  
Potter spun around in his seat to face Draco, and his lips were compressed in a hard line. Draco would have tried what kisses could do to open them, but he knew as well as Potter that this wasn’t the time.  
  
“That’s bollocks,” said Potter. “A load of _complete and utter bollocks,_ and I’m more than a little upset that you’d tell me that.” His voice was rising.  
  
Draco made a little placating gesture and turned back to his plate of food. He was starting to wonder if courting Potter’s attention had been more trouble than it was worth. Yes, they had spent a very nice night together, and it was pleasant to match wits with Potter when he didn’t know Draco was aware of his plans. But the pleasure was starting to pall.  
  
Potter’s hand grabbed his. Draco turned around and stared. Potter had been so careful not to touch him since the night before.  
  
“Listen,” said Potter, his breath like a prayer. “I really think that something’s about to happen. The goblins need a few more days for their next spell, but they know the strength of the wards this time, and they know there’s someone here who’s prepared for most of the magic they can cast. They’ll send it soon, and it’ll be powerful. If you can tell me what you suspect, what you’re doing or what you know, then it’s all the more likely that we’ll survive this.”  
  
“We? Both of us?” Draco made his eyes wide and innocent.  
  
“Look,” said Potter, with the air of someone who had decided to throw everything to the winds, “I know, okay? About certain things. About the goblins having a reason for targeting you. Shatterstone barely concerns themselves with humans unless they think that human can benefit them or has hurt them. I really don’t think you can benefit them, especially when they have almost no involvement with Gringotts most of the time.”  
  
“That doesn’t make sense, though,” said Draco. “The plan that Elian Greengrass-Rosier came up with—”  
  
“There was no plan from him!” Potter all but shouted. “He said it! He said that he’d never been in touch with you, and that you were lying!”  
  
Draco drew himself up, the picture of haughty dignity. “And he said this under Veritaserum, did he?”  
  
Potter paused, and Draco saw him raise a hand as though he was trying to paddle back up to the surface of a dark sea. “Not—not in so many words. But of course he meant it. Why would he lie?”  
  
Draco looked off to the side with a little sniff. “Why would I? You know that I can’t handle the goblin magic by myself. I need an Auror to save me. And it would be to my benefit to tell the Auror everything I can to save my life. Which I did.”  
  
Potter sighed long enough and loud enough that Draco really expected some of the stones in his walls to rattle loose. “You do need me,” he agreed softly. “Which is why it doesn’t make sense that you’d put off telling me the whole truth.”  
  
Draco folded his arms and scowled at the tabletop. “That’s the way it is, right? You’d rather believe an Auror who you _know_ lied and was trying to sneak back through my wards to do me harm over me. Why? Was Greengrass-Rosier your lover first, and you retain some kind of twisted loyalty to him?”  
  
“I’m done.”  
  
Draco lifted his head quickly. Potter was walking away from him, across the length of the dining room, his steps as heavy as though he was climbing a sideways mountain. Draco nearly stood and went after him, but he remembered the pretense of his bad leg, and instead he turned and called softly, pathetically.  
  
“What happened? What did I do? I just asked you a question.” He huddled down in his chair as Potter turned to him with empty eyes. “Do you not like being asked about your past lovers? Okay, I’m _sorry_. I won’t do it again. I promise—”  
  
“Draco. Don’t.”  
  
The use of his first name, more than the dry and dusty tone in which Potter spoke, shut Draco up, and he eyed Potter cautiously as he shut his eyes and shook his head. His hands had fallen to his sides, and he took his wand out and carefully ran it along his palm, as though he was rolling up spells that had collected in the lines of his hand.  
  
“I’ve tried and tried to get you to see that you can trust me,” Potter whispered. “I’ve saved you from goblin spells and comforted you and—and slept with you even though it was against my better judgment.”  
  
“You wanted it, too,” Draco reminded him. He wasn’t going to let Potter forget that he had been a willing participant in sex that had been some of the best of Draco’s life.  
  
“But you still won’t trust me,” Potter went on, only a blush on his cheeks showing that he acknowledged what Draco had said. “I don’t know what else I can say. So I’m done. I’ll patrol the wards and keep you safe from goblin spells, but that’s it. I’m done—consorting with you. Trying to get you to tell me the truth. It’s useless anyway, so I’ll just do the job I was given and no more.”  
  
“I don’t want you to just do the job you were given.”  
  
Draco was stunned to hear his own voice come out so tiny and so needy. From the way he paused in the doorframe with one white hand on it, so was Potter.  
  
But he didn’t turn back when he replied, “You know the way to change that. All I need is the truth. It can’t do as much damage as those spells that the Shatterstones keep sending through your wards.”  
  
Draco thought about what he was hiding, and nearly laughed aloud. Potter was wrong about that. It could land Draco in Azkaban, and that would be the end of his dreams, his thoughts, his life.  
  
But he said nothing, because he could say nothing, and Potter nodded a little, as though that was so straightforward and clear, because everything was in his little world, and walked out of the dining room with firm steps.  
  
*  
  
Draco had put it off long enough, he decided. And whether they had gained the knowledge from Jared or elsewhere, the Shatterstone clan had proven that they knew what his plans were. They had given him the exact countdown to the day that he’d planned to strike at Gringotts.  
  
How else could he confuse them and avoid their traps, except by going early?  
  
Draco touched the whip that lay coiled around his neck. He touched the crystal cufflinks that he had received as a gift from a long-time ally last year, and felt them hum with magic. He wrapped his cloak around him—an inferior Invisibility Cloak to the one that Potter possessed, this one only being made of Demiguise hair, but new and not likely to decay in the next few hours—and nodded.  
  
He was ready, or as ready as he could be when he was up against a goblin clan that possessed powers he still didn’t understand and didn’t know how to fend off.  
  
Draco left through a tiny hole in his wards located right next to a fireplace in the main library. No one else would think anything of it if they _did_ find the hole, because they would assume the opening was the connection to the Floo network. But in reality, it was a small Apparition point that Draco could use to get outside or inside instantly, and Draco was confident that even the prowling Potter hadn’t discovered it. If he had, then he would have said something to Draco about strengthening the wards, Draco was certain.  
  
If nothing else, he believed in Potter’s desire to protect him.  
  
The thought was distracting. Draco closed his eyes and Apparated with a whirl through the darkness that consumed him, leaping and flexing his muscles, and coming down with utter silence in the Apparition point that would allow him to see Gringotts.  
  
It was concealed behind what looked like an ordinary shop façade in Diagon Alley, but was really the remains of a shop destroyed during the war and only supposedly rebuilt. Draco’s kind of people were the ones who noticed it, who could get inside the façade, and who knew its secrets. Everyone else would assume that it was locked and exclusive before losing interest and wandering off, thanks to a more sophisticated version of the spell on the Leaky Cauldron.  
  
Draco knew the goblins knew about it, as well, but they had never indicated their displeasure with it. Probably they had never thought that something small and insignificant, a building constructed by humans, would be used against them.  
  
That was as much a reason to take them down as any other, Draco thought as he eased open the shop’s door and slipped out into the middle of the deserted alley. They were so arrogant, and thought they were so righteous, keeping wizard money and threatening its rightful owners. It would be a pleasure to make them pay for that arrogance.  
  
The moonlight was weak, mostly hidden by coming rainclouds, and Draco was smiling. This was his game, this was his place. His mind was surging now, in a way that made him walk across the alley almost literally on his toes, and he knew that he would see movement in a second now, and be able to deal with it faster than even Potter could move.  
  
Draco should know. He had dueled an Auror or two in his time, without them ever knowing who he was.  
  
As he approached the entrance to the bank, he folded his hands down so they touched the crystal cufflinks and whispered the word that would make them do their work. “ _Leo_.”  
  
The cufflinks shimmered, and two enormous crystalline shadows leaped to the ground on either side of him. Lion-shaped, they stalked towards the bank’s façade, their tails trailing behind them and their mouths open in roaring challenges that were entirely silent.  
  
Draco grinned a little as he watched them pass their paws over the front steps, under that inscription that warned thieves of the curse that would befall them. That curse was real, and this goblin magic, Draco could respect. Any research he did, even stories that everyone had heard of and which had run in the _Prophet,_ was enough to convince him of the reality of goblin vengeance.  
  
But even curses that powerful had a limit, and Draco had found this magic’s easily once he knew what to look for. In breathless excitement, he watched as the lions paced towards the door.  
  
The light that struck them was as silent as their roars. It illuminated the front steps of the bank, convulsing the darkness, and Draco heard the sound of ripping and tearing claws, although no sign that they existed. The cufflinks went flat and cold against his wrists as the magic drained from them, and Draco nodded when the light faded and the lions were gone.  
  
The curse took effect on those who approached the bank intending to steal something from it— _but_ it took effect on the first ones to set foot on those steps. And it only reacted this violently, and this strongly, to magical creatures who approached the bank, since the goblins perceived them as greater threats than wizards. Wizards were more likely to receive the curse of lingering misfortune.  
  
While the curse recovered from its unusual effort, it was the work of a moment for Draco to slip under the elaborate façade and inside the front doors of the bank, which were never kept locked.  
  
Inside the bank itself, he felt magic come alive, turning seeking towards him. But Jared had told him how to defeat these spells, and Draco still trusted that information. He reached out and stroked his fingers down the air, flicking his wand under his sleeve. A goblin would have a different method of disarming the spell, but this was really just a wizard spell repurposed for the goblins, and Draco could use his wand movement.  
  
" _Incognitus_ ," he whispered.  
  
The heavy feeling of magic, clasped over his head like a hood, abruptly dissolved. Draco smiled and stepped boldly past the silent counters and stools, the everyday business of the bank that most wizards saw, towards the tunnels that led down towards the vaults.  
  
A soft snarl and sound of padding paws in front of him was the only warning he had.  
  
Draco was falling under the attack of a beast that was all softness where it hit his face and all sharpness down to the claws poised to rake his belly out, but he had the whip out, and he was swinging it, and it coiled around what would be the neck of a beast like a nundu but not a nundu. Jared had told him _that_ , for certain. Even goblins found it hard to control a beast that could take down a hundred wizards, so they employed powerful illusions now instead of a nundu.  
  
"I do not believe," Draco whispered, ignoring the pain against his belly, "in any big cat that can be controlled by a whip around its neck."  
  
For an instant, wizard magic and will fought goblin magic and, probably, the long spells that Potter had told him goblins used and which Draco had never known about. The odd thought that he should do more research flickered through his head, and disappeared under the pressure of those _enormous claws._  
  
The pressure increased until Draco wondered if this trick would work after all. Most wizardly illusions couldn't be dissipated simply by disbelieving in them, he thought, while his pulse accelerated and filled his head with its thunder. He held his breath and kicked out, and then realized his mistake. That would imply he believed the cat was real.  
  
But it couldn't be. It hadn't eaten him yet, and it would have if it was real, just fastened its jaws around his face and torn it off. So Draco forced himself to relax, and gradually the weight on him began to shred and change in odd ways, and then it disappeared altogether.  
  
Draco nodded and stood up. Jared had told him those illusions _could_ kill; it would just be in other ways that they looked like they were killing. So Draco would have thought he was being disemboweled, but really he would have died of a heart attack.  
  
 _So reassuring,_ Draco thought, and slipped further down the tunnels.   
  
They curved so sharply downwards so soon that Draco knew he would have to use another of his tricks earlier than he had thought he would. He sat down and touched his wand to his shoes, murmuring soft spells that would help him here without disrupting the other charms that kept his footprints and scent undetectable.  
  
The sensation of the spell was always odd, like a wriggling tail growing through the back of his shoe. But it was really a small wing, and Draco smiled in pleasure as he stood up and flexed his feet again. The pair of wings paused, and then began to beat together, in measured time. Draco rose slowly from the floor. All he had to do was aim his body in the direction he wanted to go and steer with his arms.  
  
The wings bore him up all the way down the tunnel and past the closed doors of vaults he wasn't interested in. Draco tensed when he heard the sound of rushing water ahead. Jared had told him about this particular trap, too.  
  
Draco whipped off his Invisibility Cloak and spent a few minutes checking the enchantments on it and their strength, while the wings carried him closer and closer to the waterfall that would wash away all magic.  
  
The enchantments were as strong as they were going to get. Draco nodded, muttered something that would have been a prayer if he'd believed in any power or fate that would help a thief stealing from a goblin bank, and then flung the cloak out above his head, rocking backwards so he could stop flying.  
  
The waterfall gushed down on the cloak, but the demiguise hair on it bounced it off like regular water, keeping it from washing away the magic for a few crucial seconds. Then the cloak, growing all the while, attached itself to the roof of the tunnel, hooking into the stone, and blocking the waterfall for a few further crucial seconds.  
  
Draco bent forwards and zoomed under the waterfall like a skater. The cloak loosened as soon as it was soaked enough for the water to destroy its magic, and then blew away like a leaf as the waterfall came back down. Draco half-smiled. The nice thing about that particular trick was that the goblins would find a cloak that had been washed clean of all traces. They wouldn't be able to tell how it had been used, or what was important about it.  
  
Draco knew he would have to pass the waterfall on the way out, too, but luckily he had another trick that should take care of that.  
  
He turned a few more dazzling corners, already counting in his head. Jared had warned him that some of the vault doors here were false, leading not to real vaults but to rooms where traps waited. The distance between the waterfall and the first trap room could be measured in terms of numbers of doors.  
  
 _Thirty-four, thirty-five..._  
  
Draco lost his count as something snatched him out of the air, surrounding him with a cloud of beating darkness. He gasped and flung his hands up, striking out with a fire spell on his wand, but nothing happened except the wand clattering away. Draco found himself spun upside-down, and a few extremely complicated wingbeats later, he was dangling in the grip of something that clutched the ceiling.  
  
A giant bat, he realized as it spread its wings out and Draco could make out the ceiling and floor of the tunnel around him.   
  
And beneath him were a small number of goblins, stepping forwards to stare up at him. They had thicker skin than Draco was used to seeing, _greyer_ skin, and they held long rods that lit up at the end like wands.  
  
"Ah," said the nearest goblin, in so calm a voice Draco went still. "My name is Oldridge Shatterstone, and I have long wanted to meet you, Draco Malfoy."


	12. In Danger

“You will understand what we want of you when you pay attention to what is written on the wall.”  
  
Draco lifted his head slowly. The goblins had removed him from the embrace of the giant bat, but only to plop him down on this chair in a tiny room and bind him. The ropes extended up his neck, and Draco could only lift his head a little. The wall right in front of him was covered with writing. He couldn’t turn his head to see any others.  
  
Oldridge stood in front of him, too, his smile patient and far too toothy. “Follow along,” he said, and a long pointer leaped out of his hand, dashing Draco a stunning blow across his right eyebrow before it hovered next to the words.  
  
As much as he could with pain and fear clouding his reactions, Draco read the words. The point gave him another blow, this time on the back of the head, and Oldridge said, “Aloud this time,  _if_ you please.”  
  
“All thieves,” Draco read slowly, “become part of the warding system All thieves show the further glory of Gringotts and the goblins.”  
  
“Yes,” said Oldridge. “Exactly. And while the curse that attacks those who venture through the front doors uninvited is very effective, occasionally we choose someone to make a point in a different way.” His grin broadened around his face, making the top of his head look as though it was going to fall off. “I think that the news will spread through the right kind of people, as I believe you tend to call yourselves? And they will understand what happens when someone tries to steal from us.”  
  
Draco breathed slowly through his nose. He couldn’t give in and panic. That wouldn’t help anybody.  
  
But with the hungry stare Oldridge was giving him, it was also hard  _not_ to panic.  
  
“I suppose that you’ve saved a different fate for Jared?” Draco was impressed with himself when he managed to speak so calmly and coldly. And it was the first time in the hour since the goblins had captured him that he thought he had the  _right_ to be impressed with himself. Oldridge’s head tilted to the side like a curious puppy’s.  
  
“Yes, of course. Even wayward and disappointing children are still part of the clan.” Oldridge made a dismissive little gesture with one claw. “You don’t need to worry about him, Mr. Malfoy. Worry far more about yourself, and the ward that we’re in the process of perfecting.”  
  
“Ward,” Draco repeated, blankly. Jared had told him about plenty of spells and traps and tricks the goblins had perfected, but Draco couldn’t remember any specific mention of a ward. And he thought Jared really was the simple idiot he seemed. That meant he was less likely to be lying and trying to trick Draco, as had been Draco’s first thought after he had been caught by the bat.  
  
“Yes. A blood ward of a special kind.” Oldridge chuckled. “A ward built on blood, run on blood. Powered by magic. Able to react more quickly than the kind of magic we use, which I’m sure your Auror friend told you is powered by spells that last hours.”  
  
Draco blinked once, twice. There was only one way to keep himself from contemplating the truly terrifying vision that the goblin suggested, and that was by filling the silence with chatter. “People like me don’t have any friends among the Aurors.”  
  
Oldridge sighed with his lip stuck out. “You won’t, I hope, expect me to believe that when everyone  _knows_ Harry Potter is staying with you. And he must have been the one to save you from our spells. He’s the only one we know who has the necessary learning.”  
  
“He’s my protector. Not my friend.” Draco wondered for a brief second if the goblins could possibly know that he and Potter had made love, and dismissed the notion as irrelevant a second later. Why would it affect their punishment of Draco?  
  
It might affect the way they treated Potter, though.  
  
Draco was a little stunned at how much he didn’t want Potter suffering because of choices  _he_ had made.  
  
“As you say,” said Oldridge, though with a sly glance at him. “We stalked you with spells, not him, and he saved you each time. But he won’t be able to do it now, I’m afraid.” He patted Draco’s arm with mock sympathy and turned to look behind him. Draco still couldn’t turn his head, so he didn’t know what Oldridge was doing until he added, “Greyglass, Shadowsbane, I trust that the weapons you were readying are prepared?”  
  
“Yes, Oldridge,” said a horrible, rasping voice that would have made all of Draco’s hair stand straight up and try to climb off his body if it wasn’t already in that state. “We have swords, wands, and enchanted daggers waiting.”  
  
“Good,” said Oldridge, and nodded a little as if reciting poetry to himself. “I think we’ll slay our friend with an enchanted dagger. It won’t be the first choice of anyone coming through the ward he’ll make, but it’s convenient, and it will respond with an elegant flash of light to those thieves who might think Gringotts is unguarded against the spells in their knives.”  
  
The reality crashed home on Draco then. They were going to use his blood and his magic to create a ward. He was going to be made  _into_ a defense for the bank.  
  
And if they used the kind of enchanted dagger that Draco was sure they would, a goblin-made one...well, Draco might not have done enough research on goblins to know why the Shatterstone clan was dangerous, but he had done enough to know that a goblin-made dagger could trap a victim’s living essence, aware of what was going on outside the blade and suffering, in pain. Draco was sure they would bind his essence into the ward.  
  
He began to struggle against the ropes, and Oldridge reached out and laid a horny hand on his shoulder, cackling a bit.  
  
“It won’t hurt as much as you’re thinking. And you can know that you made a sacrifice, restored a bit of balance to the bank and to the treasures you tried to steal. What measure of atonement could be better?”  
  
Draco stared, and said nothing. He wanted to spit in Oldridge’s face, but he doubted that would change the situation, and the lies that had served him for so long were worth nothing here. He didn’t know what to do.  
  
That simple thought shook him. He didn’t know what to do, and he had no tricks or magical items left on him that would soften this or take him out of here. He was going to  _die_ , and while Oldridge was probably right that word of his fate would spread through the darkness and warn some of the people he knew about what happened to thieves in Gringotts, it wasn’t the sort of memorial that Draco would prefer to have.  
  
He was going to  _die._  
  
He opened his mouth. He didn’t actually know what he was going to say. He had sometimes pictured a scene like this, but he had thought he would have light quips, famous last words that would make his enemies look bad. He hadn’t anticipated being turned into a kind of magical defense by utterly ruthless enemies.  
  
“Clan Leader!”  
  
Draco jumped, straining against his ropes out of surprise this time. Oldridge’s eyes looked as if they would pinch shut. He whirled away from Draco and strode towards the door that Draco assumed was behind him, snapping to the goblins Draco couldn’t see, “Carry on preparing him for the ward ritual.”  
  
Greyglass and Shadowsbane were chanting, long droning chants that Draco would ordinarily have been tempted to listen to, so he could figure out how goblin ritual magic worked and in particular why Shatterstone magic was so feared. This time, though, he made himself bow his head and listen beyond them, for the instructions or information Oldridge was receiving.  
  
He must have missed something. The first thing he heard was Oldridge’s incredulous voice demanding, “He’s  _where_?”  
  
“He got beyond the front of the bank, Clan Leader.” The other goblin sounded nervous, and Draco heard a sound he thought was hard feet shuffling back and forth on the stone. “And there’s no trace of the curse on him.”  
  
Oldridge gave a low, vicious sound that Draco would have said was a snarl, except that was a disgrace to snarls. “It must have lost power when this thief confronted it with those crystal lions.”  
  
 _They know exactly what I did,_ Draco realized with a little sigh.  _Yes, I was a fool to come here, and Killian and Potter both tried to tell me so._  
  
“No, Clan Leader,” said the other goblin, and he sounded as if he wanted to be out of there. He had Draco’s sympathies. “He—there’s no trace on him. He walked right through and towards the tunnels that you captured the thief in, shouting that he’d come for what’s his.”  
  
“There’s no,” said Oldridge, and then went silent in the way Draco did when his own thoughts interrupted him.  
  
Draco had to listen even harder to get past the chanting in front of him, but while he thought he might have lost one of Oldridge’s words when the goblin spoke again, there was no mistaking that tone of urgency. “I want you to tell me  _exactly_ what he said. Repeat everything.”  
  
Draco heard what, this time, sounded like a throat cleared nervously, and then the other goblin muttered, “I come for what’s mine. I claim what is mine from the place where possession is all. Release the debt!”  
  
Oldridge began to speak in the harsh, sharp tongue of goblins, and Draco knew he had lost his chance of hearing whatever came after that. He was a little surprised that they had spoken in English so long. Probably Oldridge was just used to thinking in it after speaking to Draco, and the other goblin had gone along with him out of nervousness.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and concentrated. Who would have come to rescue him? A blood relation would have the right of claim, but…  
  
Then Draco wanted to sneer at himself. Of course not. It was Potter, it had to be.  
  
And while Draco would have felt irritated at Potter acting all possessive like that any other time, he was prepared to crawl at Potter’s feet for it now.  
  
The goblins respected the right of possession, the right of ownership. They would hesitate about keeping money away from a wizard who owned it, even if that wizard had committed a legal wrong and was hunted by the Ministry. Draco ought to know. It was one reason his father had been able to spend Galleons freely for so long.  
  
Draco had never thought to turn that idea and that respect for a claim against the goblins’ own magic, but perhaps he should have.  
  
And perhaps that would mean…  
  
Draco opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and thought as hard as he could of the way he and Potter had made love, the way Potter’s arm had felt flung over him, the way Potter had stared at him with hazed eyes full of conflict and devotion, so he could respond in the way that the magic probably required.  
  
“I wish to go to what’s mine!”  
  
There was a loud spluttering sound, and Draco knew he had at least effectively disrupted the two goblins’ chant to turn him into a ward. Which might only be the effect of surprise, but then Draco opened his eyes and looked down at himself.  
  
His bound limbs were edged in a pale blue fire that looked like burning shadows more than it did light. As Draco watched with a slightly open mouth, they came over and danced on the ropes, burning them to ashes. He stood up, and the fire followed him, crawling up his arms to his shoulders.  
  
The goblins immediately rushed him, but while Draco didn’t have his wand or any artifacts left—they’d taken those immediately, of course—he was still taller and stronger and had the advantage of surprise. He kicked out with his left foot, surprising the goblin he thought was Greyglass, and caught him in the forehead, sending him to the floor. The other one slowed down and fumbled at his side for a dagger, maybe the one they had been going to use to cut Draco’s throat.  
  
Draco took great pleasure in rushing him and twisting away the dagger. The goblin tried to bite him, but again Draco had the advantage in reach, and it wasn’t like he wanted to stay and grapple with people trying to kill him. He rushed away again, dagger firmly in hand.  
  
He felt a pulse traveling up his arm immediately. It was the dagger’s magic reaching out, seeking to know him and enact his will.  
  
Oldridge stepped towards him, one hand stretched out and fingers cocked. Draco felt a pull on the dagger, one that seemed internal as much as external. He thought Oldridge might be draining the dagger’s magic even more than he was trying to get it away from Draco.  
  
Draco used the only distraction he could think of. He yelled, a stream of nonsense mingled with curse words, and felt Oldridge jerk and his concentration break. Then Draco ran straight at him.  
  
Oldridge crouched as if he planned to grasp Draco and hold him in his claws. Draco leaped over him, a desperate maneuver that made his legs and lungs burn, and then he was running straight at the doorway with no one to stop him. The goblin Oldridge had been talking to had already fled.  
  
 _Yes, run,_ Draco thought, heart hammering exultantly as he sped out into the passage and took the path that slanted upwards, and he couldn’t even tell whether it was the goblin or himself he was speaking to.  
  
He heard immediate shouts and what sounded oddly like the calls of horns behind him, and then steady cries that weren’t either human or goblin. Draco grimaced. He reckoned the goblins had called out some animal defenses that wouldn’t be affected by the magic Draco and Potter had wielded against the others.  
  
Draco couldn’t care about that, though. He was dressed in rags and holding a dagger that might be his only weapon until he could get out of here, and he was running for his life.  
  
Up the tunnel he hurtled, his breath coming so fast that it burned, his muscles doing the same thing at the same time, his legs trembling and nearly giving out beneath him. He could hear noise from ahead now that didn’t sound like an organized defense, and he headed for that, hoping Potter would be at the center of it.  
  
*  
  
He was.  
  
Draco wanted to freeze when he saw him. Only the insanity of the calls and yells from behind him, the yelping that sounded like hounds, kept him running instead of stopping to admire the sheer jaw-dropping spectacle that was Harry Potter fighting goblin magic.  
  
The goblins were standing around him, chanting and flicking out long white strands from their fingers, and silver daggers, and things that looked like swords but kept disappearing when Draco tried to stare at them for too long. It seemed like the white strands should have writhed around Potter and stopped him, the daggers should have pierced him, and the swords should have cut off his limbs or his head.  
  
Instead, Potter was dancing in the middle of the strands, and his spells cut them. He kept casting other spells that stole the swords and daggers from the goblins, and a huge pile of discarded weapons was growing at his feet. Draco also thought he would probably trip over them, but he didn’t. His means of flowing, of dancing, were solid and tireless.  
  
 _This is the way that someone fighting a battle should look,_ Draco thought, with an odd sensation of tightening in his throat and a peculiar longing in his heart.  _Not the way that I look, sneaking through the corridors…_  
  
Then Potter turned his head and saw Draco, and his means of fighting changed.  
  
He leaped abruptly into the air, and cast a spell that bore him up on wings of fiery red cloud. Draco had never seen it before, and the burning in his chest altered and intensified. He wanted to learn it. This was some of the unique Auror magic that Potter had never shown him, probably.  
  
Potter came down wheeling, and landed on the other side of the goblins and the mess of metal he’d made, reaching for Draco’s hand. Draco let him take it without protest, staring at him. Potter glowed with the same blue fire that Draco had invoked to burn the ropes off him, and he nodded to Draco.  
  
“Come on, then,” he said. “But leave any wealth that you’ve got from here behind, or this escape won’t work.”  
  
Draco didn’t move. “They have my wand.”  
  
Potter turned around to face the goblins. “By right of possession, we call Draco Malfoy’s wand!” he said, his voice like a bugle, and Draco looked around, thinking the wand really would fly to them. Potter’s voice was that strong, that rich and unchallenged.  
  
But instead, Oldridge came around the corner, walking carefully. He held Draco’s wand in one hand and a black sphere in the other, and Draco felt Potter go very still.  
  
“Did you think it would be that easy?” Oldridge whispered, halting. “You should fear the power of the Shatterstone clan for a reason, you know.”  
  
Potter tensed beside him, but Draco had no idea why, until Oldridge hurled the sphere and Potter shoved Draco aside, getting in the way of the sphere himself.   
  
Sprawled on the floor, Draco stared at the unknown and deadly magic hurtling straight at Potter, and couldn’t think of a thing he could do to help.


	13. Explanations for All

The black sphere exploded in the air near Harry’s chest. Draco realized that he was holding his own breath so tightly his lungs were shrieking, and he tried to remember everything he could of wandless magic. He was probably going to end up saving Harry.  
  
But instead, Harry’s wand was up, and a shield had formed tight to his body, so close around his skin that Draco couldn’t see any break in it. It was as though Harry was wearing a hat and gloves and cloth over every inch of skin.  
  
The explosion hit Harry and threw him, and then Draco had to duck as small, jagged pieces of what looked like glass radiated outwards from the center of the explosion. His heart was pounding, his throat dry. That could have been  _so much worse_ than it was. Of course the goblins would have tried a trap that would kill both of them, not just one.  
  
But Harry was already back on his feet, unwounded. Draco reckoned the shield must have protected him from impact with the wall as well as from what the goblins’ magic had tried to do to him. He was smiling, juggling a small ball of magic, blazing fire in one hand, and his eyes flared with a depth Draco had never seen before.  
  
“Trying to murder an Auror,” he said aloud, his voice slow and thoughtful. “The one crime for which the Ministry allows us to strike back with lethal force against goblins.”  
  
Oldridge was moving forwards, his face twisted into such a snarl of rage that Draco thought he probably didn’t even hear the words, or understand the warning. He had something else in his hand now, a ball of razor-shards that Draco didn’t understand how he could hold without skin being scraped away.  
  
“Oldridge Shatterstone,” said Harry, and his voice vibrated with a force Draco had never heard. “This is the last warning you will receive.  _Stop_.”  
  
Oldridge just stepped up again, and his arm curved back as if he was going to hurl the ball of shards. Draco flinched despite himself, despite the fact that it all seemed to be happening in slow motion, and despite the fact that Harry wasn’t falling back.  
  
The other goblins, though, had scattered. When Draco stared around the room, looking for some way that he could hold back Oldridge’s magic, he saw none of them in sight. Apparently they knew what it meant when an Auror was about to use lethal force.  
  
Draco didn’t, not really, but he found himself edging closer instead of away. One thing he was certain about was that Harry would never hurt him.  
  
Oldridge howled and hurled the ball of razors, at the same time as Harry traced his wand in what looked like a cross-like pattern in front of him and whispered, “ _Quattuor_.”  
  
The ball of fire left Harry’s hand and soared at Oldridge, expanding into a ring of fire so intense and hot that Draco had to scramble back, coughing. Harry’s hand caught at the back of his robe in the next instant, hauling him further out of the way.  
  
The ball of razors dissolved in the heat, and the ring of fire went on, spreading, but not far. Oldridge either didn’t believe it could harm him or didn’t move fast enough.  
  
 _Or maybe,_ Draco decided, eyeing the way that the goblin’s feet seemed rooted to the floor and his eyes attached to Harry,  _he’s just too furious to think about the way that he’s going to lose._  
  
The ball of fire hit, and the bank rocked with the silent explosion, or so it seemed to Draco. He blinked his eyes open desperately against the impulse to keep them shut, snatching at the wall. He had to see what happened, had to be prepared when Oldridge survived it and moved again, if he did.  
  
It took him a long moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, he had to clench his jaw shut to keep from throwing up.  
  
No wonder Harry had triggered the spell by whispering,  _Quattuor_ , the Latin word for “four.” Four pieces of Oldridge lay on the floor, quartered neatly by the fire that had blasted straight through him. And there was no sign that the fire had hit anything else, even when Draco looked around for signs of it.  
  
“Are you all right, Draco?” Harry was suddenly in front of him, as though he wanted to protect Draco from the sight of how  _real_  Auror magic worked. “Come on, we have to get out of here—”  
  
“My wand!” Draco insisted, shocked from his stupor by that all-important fact. “Where did Oldridge put it? I know it was here a minute ago—”  
  
Harry winced.  _Winced._  
  
“What?” Draco demanded, trying to peer over his shoulder. Perhaps Oldridge had dropped it and it had rolled into a far corner of the bank, and if so, then it should be possible for Harry to simply cast a Summoning Charm and retrieve it.  
  
“Oldridge was holding it when the fire struck him,” Harry said quietly, quickly. “There’s nothing we can do about it, and staying here is just going to invite the goblins to finish what they tried to start. Come  _on_.” His hand yanked hard at the back of Draco’s collar again, and Draco found himself towed after Harry without the ability to stand on his own two feet.  
  
Draco went because he had to, but his mind was dancing dizzily, unable to find a place to stand. How could it be true that his wand was  _gone_? He had come into the bank intending to come out with money, a good reputation, the honor of fooling the goblins and their supposedly impenetrable protections, and the possibility of more compensation later because his vault was among those “robbed.”  
  
Now he was leaving with nothing. He had  _never_ done that, even in his early thefts when he hadn’t planned enough and had almost got caught. He always left with more than he came in with, if only by a few Galleons.  
  
Not this time. And it seemed that Potter had no intention of letting Draco go to recoup his losses where he could.  
  
Not that he could, without a bloody  _wand_.  
  
Draco shut his eyes and turned around so that he was running next to Potter, instead of being dragged. He got one look of approval from green eyes before Potter also seemed to reason that they need to concentrate on their flight.  
  
Draco didn’t care about that approval as much as he would have only five minutes ago. And with his chest dully on fire, he just  _couldn’t._ That was the way it was.  
  
*  
  
“It happens sometimes, you know. Especially among the Aurors. People get injured, they fall on their wands and break them, they have to leave them behind when they’re being—rescued from someone who captured them.” Potter’s voice caught in his throat as he went on speaking, soothingly, while he pressed Draco down on his bed. “They can bond with new wands. So can you. We’ll go to Ollivander’s in the morning.”  
  
Draco didn’t pay any attention, simply curling up and planting his forehead and hands between his knees. He didn’t want to listen to Potter chatter about speculations that Draco knew were useless, because they were. He wasn’t going to get a new wand. He wasn’t going to bond with a new wand. He would have a devil of a time talking himself out of the inevitable questions Potter would ask without a wand and the potential to cast Memory Charms if he had to.  
  
“Draco?” Potter’s hoarse whisper, as he knelt down beside him. “You know you can do this. You know you can get past this.”  
  
“How would you know?” Draco asked, and his voice was tired and dusty despite himself. “I don’t—I know that we slept together and that means something to you. I’m glad it does. But you don’t really know me.”  
  
Silence answered him instead of the stream of reassurances he’d expected. Blinking, Draco looked up.  
  
Potter had leaned back on his heels and was regarding him in a new way, almost the cool approval that he had used when Draco finally started running from the bank. But there was something else in it that made Draco sit up, hand sinking to his side before he remembered and clenched it into a useless fist. No wand there that he could use to defend himself from whatever was lurking in Potter’s eyes.  
  
“Well,” said Potter, “for one thing, I know that you don’t have a bad leg. And while I was giving you the chance to tell me that the goblins kidnapped you out of bed with their magic—which the Shatterstone clan could certainly do—you didn’t tell me that. So I think I do know something about you, yes.”  
  
Draco sat in stunned silence on the bed a moment too long before he tried to move.  
  
Potter’s spell raised walls of gleaming, flexible light around the bed. Draco had seen them before, the shield spells that someone could use to stop a child or a pet animal from falling into trouble. He had never encountered one of such strength that it only bent beneath the assault of a determined adult man and threw him back on the bed.  
  
He scrambled up on his hands and knees. The walls were up and shining in every direction, and Draco already knew that he wouldn’t get far if he attempted to make a break for it.  
  
Potter had risen to his feet. He was coolly appraising Draco in a way that Draco hadn’t known existed, either, that  _look_  in the eyes of a Gryffindor. He stared back and waited for some kind of explanation. He didn’t reach for words to offer his own, because there was no way that he would come up with something to satisfy Potter.  
  
“You see,” said Potter, spinning his wand slowly between his fingers, “we knew for a long time that a thief with the protection of blood wards and an old pure-blood house was active, because there was no other way to explain some of the clues we found and the ways that carefully-guarded objects vanished into thin air. But we couldn’t catch you, and we couldn’t get involved until we had some proof of the Dark Arts.”  
  
“And some proof altogether,” said Draco, tossing his head back, hoping that he could distract Potter with the line of his throat. Hey, it had worked before. “I’m not a thief.”  
  
Potter’s lip curled, and Draco inexplicably flinched before he could catch himself. “Don’t play like that now,” said Potter. “Don’t  _pretend_. It doesn’t become you.”  
  
“And, of course, being caught on a bed like a misbehaving child does.” Draco stared at the shields of light.  
  
Potter didn’t respond, but went on. “Then you did use Dark Arts at the sight of one of the thefts. There was no other way that someone could have got around the MacDougal blood wards, which are powerful and Light. So we had our excuse to send Aurors. And we had the rumors that made us certain that it was you.  
  
“But we still couldn’t arrest you without proof. And there was no excuse to search your Manor, and the rumors didn’t provide us with forewarning enough to track you down.”  
  
“Maybe because there  _was_ no forewarning,” said Draco, and gave an acid smile when Potter’s jaw clenched. If he was going down no matter what, he at least wasn’t going to play along with Potter’s game and confess everything like the good little broken toy Potter would obviously have preferred. “I didn’t do those things.”  
  
Potter stared him dead in the eye and continued speaking. “Then, at the same time as rumors started spreading about some sort of full-scale assault, we got the news that you were receiving death threats. And from the description of them, I recognized them right away as what they were. Goblin magic.”  
  
Draco responded before he could stop himself, although it was playing into Potter’s hands. “So you knew all along what was going on!”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, and shook his head. “But fool that I was, I really did hope that you would confess of your own free will. So we came along, and I baited the trap with someone I knew to have a grudge against you and someone who’s a  _really_ good actor. In fact, he used to be an actor before he was an Auror. Top marks in Stealth and Disguise. I hoped that if you saw me kicking Greengrass-Rosier out of the house, you would trust me more.”  
  
“Your  _actor_ didn’t help you much,” Draco jibed. “Since he was hardly here, and I still didn’t trust you completely even after you kicked him out.”  
  
Potter laughed aloud at him. “Did you misunderstand me? I didn’t mean that the person with a grudge against you and the person who was an actor were the  _same_ person. The actor was Mytherian. I think you’ll agree that he was supremely convincing.”  
  
Draco clenched his jaw to keep from screaming. “So you were going to trick a confession out of me? How  _legal_.”  
  
“No,” said Potter tightly. “I foolishly thought that I could make you confess. I already said that. But there was no reason that we couldn’t give you encouragement on more than one level. Mytherian was pretending to hate me, and if you still hated me, we thought that might give you a common bond to talk to him. And in the meantime, he was hinting that these little rumors were spreading, like Ron and me having a falling-out. If you’d pounced on them and shown him a bit of trust, you might have shown him more.”  
  
Draco shook his head. He felt dazed. “But I overheard you and Shacklebolt speaking. Your plan was apparently to seduce me all along, wasn’t it?”  
  
Potter’s eyes flickered for the first times, and his cheeks were red now. “What I told you about the one time I slept with someone I was guarding is still true. I was ashamed of it then.” He looked up again, and the embarrassment was already gone. “But I’m less ashamed of it now, now that I know  _you_  knew.”  
  
Draco snarled a little in response. “Why were you arguing with Shacklebolt?”  
  
Potter shrugged. “He wanted me to go ahead and advance the plan of seduction, before the goblins killed you. I did take the duty of protecting you seriously, you know,” he added wistfully. “Otherwise, if I’d only wanted you dead and punished for the crimes you already committed, all I had to do was not save you from the goblin spells. Only a few Aurors know that I know how to counter them.”  
  
Draco brushed that aside. “And you planted Greengrass-Rosier near the wards to invade and prove that I could trust you more, I suppose?”  
  
Potter shot him an exasperated glance. “He planted himself. I thought you had some grand plan when you accused him of being the one who sent you the information for the attack on Gringotts. I alerted the Ministry of it—”  
  
Draco was about to ask how, but then he remembered all those times that Potter was out of the room where Draco sat, prowling around the wards and plotting ways to “protect” him. It would have been easy enough for Potter to contact the Ministry then, especially when he was keyed into Draco’s wards and not stopped from sending messages through them.  
  
“But they sent Elian without telling me what he planned.” Potter rolled his eyes. “For that matter, they might not have known.  _He_ might not have known. Elian was always impulsive, and he acts without thinking, and he really does have a grudge against you. He might have thought sneaking through the wards and playing the enemy was the best means to force you to confess. At least he was smart enough to go along with it when he figured out what I wanted him to do.”  
  
Draco felt his face work. He remembered Greengrass-Rosier’s tearful apology to Potter, an apology that had seemed forced out of him. He remembered that Greengrass-Rosier had confessed to writing to Draco after Potter had reminded him what was “really important,” even though Draco had certainly never written to him.  
  
“You  _shits_ ,” Draco whispered. Then he shook his head and seized the one comfort that was left to him before Potter could speak. “But at least you didn’t anticipate everything. I could have died when that second goblin spell came through the wards. They put you to sleep, too.”  
  
Potter gazed steadily at him.  
  
And Draco remembered the way Potter had flushed when Draco referred to him being asleep, and how he had sprung so suddenly to his feet and dashed to rescue Draco.  
  
“You were  _pretending_ ,” Draco breathed. “Again. You—you pretended to be asleep to see what would happen?”  
  
Potter nodded slowly. “But you’re still right that you could have died. I almost waited too long. I was waiting to see if you were more powerful than you’d told us, if you might have managed to counteract the curse. Shatterstone is a strange clan. That they were plotting with you against the bank was a possibility I couldn’t discount, especially when you were so bloody reluctant to confess anything. A secret alliance with them would have accounted for that.” He sighed. “But then I saw how clueless you seemed at the mention of the name Shatterstone the next day, and I realized that that wasn’t it.”  
  
“You knew it was Shatterstone after me?” Draco whispered. “How?”  
  
“I recognized their style of magic.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes and sat there, silent and bitter. In part, it was against himself for not having realized sooner what Potter could teach him, and forging a different kind of alliance with him. In great part, it was against the Shatterstone clan for having forced this situation in the first place.  
  
In greater part, though, it was against Potter and the Ministry for having captured Draco when he was on the brink of his greatest theft, before he managed to really make a life for himself.  
  
He managed to force his eyes open, and looked at Potter. “So what happens now?”  
  
“I’m going to recommend leniency,” Potter replied. “I rescued you from the bank before you could steal anything.” He stood up, hesitated, and then said, “For what it’s worth, I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. That’s why I was encouraging you to confess so much. There was—there was nothing much I could do in a situation like this, but if you had confessed and made proper restitution by returning items you stole, the Ministry would have only levied a fine or something. Now…” He trailed off helplessly.  
  
Draco stared at him, and said nothing. What good were Potter’s apologies now, when they couldn’t change anything?   
  
“Or you could have gone along with me, and realized that being with me is worth more than being with the Ministry,” said Draco. “You lied and pretended as much as I did.”  
  
Potter’s eyes abruptly flared with fire that made Draco roll back, before he remembered the shield around the bed and stopped moving so he wouldn’t crash into it. “ _I’m_ not the one who wouldn’t tell the truth even when I was begged to do so,” Potter whispered. “ _I’m_ not the one who was so arrogant that he never even bothered to look into the possibility that someone else was lying, too. If you had confessed, I would have told you the truth right away.”  
  
“Would you?”  
  
“Yes.” Potter never flinched, never looked away from him. It was Draco, in the end, who looked away.  
  
Potter sighed hard enough to make the walls of the shield flutter. “I’ll still recommend leniency, but I’m not sure how much good it’ll do.” The bed rose from the floor, still surrounded by the shields. “Let’s go.”


	14. Paean to Skill

“You know that you’re going to be sentenced to Azkaban, right, Malfoy?”  
  
Draco sat in the holding cell and studied the pattern on the wall in front of him. He didn’t think anyone had intended to leave that pattern. It was a soft scratching of lines, and someone had tried to scrub it off, so another prisoner like him must have left it here. But Draco could still make out the hulking, hunched form of a Dementor.   
  
It seemed to be towering over a smaller group of human figures. Draco squinted, trying to make out whether he could see the Dementor opening its mouth to swallow the souls of the humans, or whether that was only a smear on the wall instead of part of the pattern.  
  
“Are you  _listening_ to me, Malfoy?”  
  
Well, no, he wasn’t. Draco couldn’t stop his ears from picking up the sound of Greengrass-Rosier’s voice, but he could stop himself from responding. He shifted so that he could lounge in the chair a little more comfortably. The bars that separated him from Greengrass-Rosier weren’t as interesting to look at as the wall was, and there was always the chance that the arrogant Auror would think Draco was looking at him if he turned that way, even though Draco was ignoring his existence right now.  
  
“I ought to come in there and tell you what arresting you cost this Department—” From the sound of it, Greengrass-Rosier was starting to scrape his wand against the lock.  
  
“I can give him an accounting better than you can, Elian,” said a voice that made Draco’s heart beat faster, despite everything. “And it’s interesting seeing you down here anyway, when I  _distinctly_ heard Kingsley tell you to stay away from this prisoner.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier gave a little snarl that Draco didn’t think was feigned. This time, Draco thought it worthwhile to turn his head and see the idiot. He was leaning against the bars as though to protect himself from an attack from behind.  
  
And Potter was the one who was behind him, giving him a vague smile in the instant before he turned his head and fixed his gaze on Draco.  
  
Draco looked back with his pulse fluttering in his throat. There was no way that he could pretend to be indifferent to Potter, and it would be a waste of time to try. He would start when Potter spoke, and betray himself. Or he would make a motion with one hand to reach out and touch Potter, and only then remember that he wasn’t allowed to.  _Something_ would happen that would be stupid and give him away.  
  
“I’m the one who took on the costs of this operation, while you only had one acting part,” Potter went on quietly, turning to glance at Greengrass-Rosier. “I’m the most appropriate person to enlighten him. And you’re the one who needs to leave, or the sacking that we thought we were playing at becomes real.” He added, as Greengrass-Rosier opened his mouth, maybe to question Potter, “And I have that directly from Kingsley’s mouth.”  
  
Greengrass-Rosier slinked away like a whipped dog. Draco nodded, and was proud that his voice was distant when he spoke. “Thank you for getting rid of him. He was tiresome to listen to.”  
  
“I’m sure.” Potter leaned one elbow against the bars, and Draco promptly looked away again. He had thought Potter was going to come into the cell and speak to him, and that would have been an acceptable excuse to pay attention to him, but this wasn’t.  
  
“You’re not sorry for it, even now, are you?” Potter asked, his voice full of something that sounded like soft sadness. “I have to wonder how you got away with your deception for so long. You’re arrogant and won’t lower yourself to feigning something you don’t feel, like respect for others. And you never noticed that I was playing you.”  
  
Draco tightened his fingers on the sides of the chair, but didn’t respond. Perhaps the image on the wall wasn’t a Dementor after all, the way he had first thought it was. Perhaps he was looking at a Grim hunched over and about to strike at his prey.  
  
“Malfoy? Are you listening to me?” Potter rapped on the bars and made them ring like bells, something Draco hadn’t known was possible. He jumped. Potter sighed. “This could be important, you know. That you aren’t as good an actor as you think you are.”  
  
Draco said nothing. He and Potter had already said everything that had to be said between them, he thought, and Greengrass-Rosier was right. He would be sentenced to Azkaban for his thefts, and there was nothing Potter could do to stop that, not when he had been the one to bring Draco in in the first place.  
  
Potter sighed, said, “Maybe it’s better this way,” and then turned around and walked down the corridor. Draco allowed him to get far away enough away that he knew Potter wouldn’t suddenly turn around and come back before he closed his eyes.  
  
But still he wouldn’t bow his head. And he opened his eyes in a few minutes and went on studying the pattern on the walls, which he was now pretty sure was a crouching dragon breathing fire back at the humans trying to fling chains over its wings.  
  
*  
  
Draco came before the Lower Wizengamot—the smaller version of the Wizengamot, full of members chosen on a rotating monthly basis, that dealt with smaller crimes than murder or violations of the laws governing underage magic—two days later. The Auror who arrived to escort him to the courtroom looked in through the bars at him and whistled softly. “Wow. I’m glad that I never took up a life of crime. I wouldn’t like what it did to my looks.”  
  
Draco started despite himself. This was Auror Mytherian, only looking as Draco had never seen him, with a calm face and almost pitying expression as he unlocked Draco’s cell. “Come on. Walk in front of me, hands where I can see them.”  
  
He  _was_ a good actor, Draco thought, studying the sound of Mytherian’s steps as much as he could over his shoulder, while Mytherian now and then murmured directions to go around a certain corner or past a certain office. Draco would have said that all Mytherian cared about was sulking and getting one over on Potter, before this. But this man was an Auror who seemed patient, almost nice, but was certainly keeping a sharp eye on Draco. Draco knew he didn’t dare try to run, even if he could have got out of the Ministry on his own. Mytherian would have captured him in seconds.  
  
That made Draco wonder something, and while he didn’t really think he could escape, he  _was_ going to ask questions before he ended up in Azkaban.  
  
“Don’t you envy Potter at all?” he asked, as they approached the thick oak door of the courtroom. “I thought you had to have a real emotion at bottom when you were acting like that. Or at least be able to think yourself into it.”  
  
Mytherian chuckled. “Oh, I would probably find him insufferable if I had to work with him all the time. That noble desire to always be sacrificing himself for something, and the sheer physical pain he went through when he had to  _lie_ …I don’t know why he became an Auror at all if he wanted a career that was always ethically pure.”  
  
Draco cocked his head. “Then he does regret having to lie to me?”  
  
Mytherian paused with one hand on the door, coming up beside Draco so that he could give Draco the most incredulous look Draco had ever seen on another being’s face. “You’re as blind as he said,” Mytherian muttered, and pushed the door open. “Draco Malfoy, Auror Mytherian escorting.”  
  
Draco went in with his head lifted, hoping that his blush at Mytherian’s last words wasn’t as visible as it felt like. But he had something more important than even the way the opening moments of his trial went on his mind.  
  
 _Potter really does regret it. I know he said that, but I thought even that was just a ploy. It certainly didn’t keep him from arresting me._  
  
As the introductions were made of the Wizengamot members who would preside at his trial and the Aurors who would give testimony against him, Draco leaned thoughtfully back in his chair and pursued the sort of understanding he hadn’t been able to when he was so caught up in rage at the failure of his plans.  
  
Potter had said that he didn’t want to do this, that he had freely given Draco the chance to confess. It was true he had also fought against sleeping with Draco. Draco had thought that had to do with the bad experience he’d told Draco about and with some Gryffindor idea that lovemaking should be shared only between people committed to each other. And then Potter had confessed, and he’d attributed every scrap of it to Potter’s ethics, the way Mytherian seemed to do.  
  
But what if it was more than that? What if Potter regretted what he had to do not only because he wanted to be perfectly ethical all the time, the way Mytherian had said, but because it was  _Draco_ that he’d had to do it to?  
  
Draco looked up when the recitation of his various crimes and the procedures that would be used to interrogate him finally came to an end. Potter was taking his place at the small mahogany podium set up for the chief witness in front of Draco.  
  
Draco did what he hadn’t tried to do since Potter had betrayed him—turned him in, maybe he could think of it like that—and caught Potter’s eye.  
  
Potter gave him a single look, so deep and blazing that Draco bit his lip to keep from gasping. It wasn’t the cool, detached one he had thought Potter would use, but on the other hand, it wasn’t mocking or upset, either. It was trying to give him a message, and Draco wanted to kick himself for not understanding.  
  
For not looking for the message earlier.  
  
Potter faced forwards again and took the oath that would be used on him in place of Veritaserum, and then began to answer questions. Draco listened with half an ear to a description of what Potter had already told him, how they had started suspecting Draco but had had no excuse to get in and search Malfoy Manor until Draco had put out the call for an Auror guard after he started receiving the death threats.   
  
At least this confirmed that Potter thought him worth thinking about and putting a lot of planning into. And that Potter was intelligent.  
  
Which meant…  
  
Draco snapped back to attention as the chief of the Lower Wizengamot for this month, a plump wizard named Horatio Pinenut, leaned forwards and asked, “And what is your recommendation for punishment, Auror Potter?”  
  
Draco hadn’t known they allowed Aurors to recommend punishments. On the other hand, Potter wasn’t an ordinary Auror. For the moment, Draco was fully prepared to celebrate that fact, if it would work for him.  
  
Potter’s head tipped in so slow and sensuous a motion that Draco had to stop himself from licking his lips. Potter had no right to look like  _that,_ that was all.   
  
“There are several complicating factors to the case that inform my recommendation, sir,” said Potter. “May I explain them?”  
  
Pinenut flinched and blinked. It was probably overloading his brain, this notion of exceptions, Draco thought wryly. “Of course, Auror Potter.”  
  
“First,” said Potter, “there’s the fact that Draco Malfoy did not actually complete his intended theft from Gringotts. Second, he endured several minutes of punishment, total, under some of the most powerful goblin curses we know of.” He turned his head and fastened his eyes on Draco. “And third, there is the loss of his wand.”  
  
“He’s committed plenty of other crimes,” a woman with grey hair snapped at once. Draco decided that he didn’t like her.  
  
“Of course, but we couldn’t find enough evidence to try him at the time, and going through the Manor has yielded no results,” said Potter, with a piteous expression that Draco had to work not to laugh at.  
  
Of course going through the Manor had yielded no results. They would have needed a Malfoy to show them where the numerous hidden niches lay and how the wards worked. Without that, the wards wouldn’t even attack them. They would simply guard Draco’s caches of artifacts and Galleons forever, unnoticed.  
  
And Draco hadn’t kept many of the things he stole, either. He’d sold them on. Galleons were always less easy to trace than a distinctive weapon or heirloom.  
  
“Make him help you,” said Pinenut, who looked relieved that he had a solution for this particular difficulty. “Then he could lead you right to the treasures that I’m sure are there.”  
  
“Right now, he has no motive to help us,” said Potter, and he glanced over at Draco. “He has no expectation of anything but years in Azkaban.”  
  
Draco promptly tried to put his chin up and look as haughty and untouched by the threat of  _years_ in prison as a master thief should. He got some grimaces from the members of the Lower Wizengamot, before they turned back to Potter.  
  
“You’re sure you can’t find the stolen objects without his help?” asked the same woman who had objected that Draco had committed other crimes.  
  
Potter nodded mournfully. “I’m not that good an Auror when it comes to finding objects, Madam Blavatsky. I’m better at finding criminals and dueling with them.”  
  
 _And lying, and acting, and sucking my cock,_ Draco thought. He was trying to keep himself from feeling too much, because hope was so painful, but it crouched there and he felt it anyway.  
  
“Very well, say that we let him help and remove some time from his sentence,” Pinenut said. He still looked happy that they might be coming close to settling this particular matter. “And what about the other two circumstances you mentioned?”  
  
“I’m calling on the Maldovian Exception,” said Potter.  
  
Draco’s mind raced for a second. Maldvoian had been the name of a Dark wizard, someone who had started a new bunch of Death Eaters a few years ago, mostly because he was angry that the Dark Lord had never valued him enough to give him the Mark. That told Draco that, however powerful and determined he might have been, he was a right idiot.  
  
“I don’t see how…” said Madam Blavatsky, but her voice trailed off.  
  
“Exactly,” said Potter softly. “Maldovian endured several bouts of the Cruciatus Curse from his intimates when he began to discuss the notion of surrendering to us. None of us stepped in because we couldn’t afford—or so we thought—to intervene even in torture if it would endanger an Auror. Later, it was determined that we should have taken the risk. We’re supposed to  _prevent_ torture, even if it happens to someone we hate. And Draco Malfoy was tortured, and I didn’t break my cover to save him.” Potter bowed his head.  
  
 _You are so,_ Draco thought, and then let it go, because he didn’t have an appropriate adjective to complete the sentence.  
  
“You are saying that  _you_ are the one who should have intervened and failed?” Pinenut obviously needed the whole thing laid out for him in simple terms.  
  
“Yes.” Potter lifted his head, and his face was anguished. Draco thought that might be the first genuine emotion, other than the blazing glance he’d given Draco, Potter had shown since this trial started. “There’s also the matter of Mr. Malfoy’s wand. I used a curse that burned it to ashes. Its loss lies at the Ministry’s feet. At  _my_ feet.”  
  
“You were killing a goblin who would have killed both of you!” objected Madam Blavatsky. “You were saving Mr. Malfoy’s life.” She cast Draco a venomous glance.  
  
“And I’ve received training that tells me not to react with panic under even the most fear-inducting circumstances,” Potter said softly. “I had time to warn Oldridge Shatterstone of what attacking me would mean—that I could retaliate with lethal force. I should have had time to warn him to lay down the wand as well.”  
  
“I must say, the Shatterstone goblins are demanding more than this,” said Pinenut suddenly. Draco could almost  _see_ the moment when the thought struck him and woke up his brain. “They claim that stolen treasure was indeed taken, and they’re demanding compensation for the death of Oldridge.”  
  
“I’ll be dragged through mud in public for the mistakes I made,” Potter said. “I deserve it. So let the goblins take the loss of my reputation as a competent Auror for the compensation. And I know that Mr. Malfoy removed a dagger from the bank. I’ll return it, with appropriate penances and observances.”  
  
Draco bowed his head. He hoped he could look penitent to someone who observed him, and not like he wanted to burst out laughing.  
  
How much of this had Potter planned? How much was him just taking advantage of circumstances? Either way, Draco had to admire him for it.  
  
And not just because it was sparing him from a long time in Azkaban.  
  
“You are saying that many of the failures and excesses of this investigation can be laid at your feet?” someone else from the back asked now. Draco knew from the slow excitement in her voice that she was probably an enemy of Potter’s.  
  
“I am.” Potter bent down until his hair was almost touching the podium. “I did my duty, but I should have done it in a different way. It’s only due to my mistakes that we didn’t have a full confession from Mr. Malfoy earlier.”  
  
Draco wanted to howl. Potter had been the only Auror in the Manor with him for much of the case. No one could contradict him, unless Draco chose to do so.  
  
And Draco was not a fool.  
  
*  
  
In the end, even after (spittle-flecked) testimony from Greengrass-Rosier, the Lower Wizengamot was persuaded by Potter’s arguments, enticed by the chance to make Potter suffer in the press, and bored by the case. Draco was sure of all those motives, although he didn’t know how many of the members felt each one, or a combination of the emotions.  
  
Once he had agreed to show them around the Manor and reveal the hiding place of those stolen trophies he still possessed, they gave him a six-month sentence in the Ministry holding cells, with a potential month to be taken off depending on the extent of his cooperation.  
  
Draco shut his eyes and sighed when he stepped down from the criminal’s chair. Six months being held by the Ministry was still annoying as hell, but at least it wasn’t Azkaban. He would make it.  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
It was Potter, right beside him as they entered the corridor, and Mytherian stepped back with a knowing smile. Potter nodded to him. “I have to talk to Malfoy about when we’re going to go to the Manor.”  
  
“Of course,” said Mytherian. The knowing little smile continued. Draco would have found that annoying, but he didn’t think Mytherian would betray them. He’d had the chance to do so many times before. “I’ll go and wait by his cell. A pleasure working with you, Potter.” He nodded and walked away.  
  
Potter stared at Draco. Draco lifted his chin and whispered, “Are we being observed?”  
  
“Not here. Not now,” said Potter.  
  
Draco smiled, and let Potter wait on the hooks of the moment before he said, “How much of that was real?”  
  
“A lot,” said Potter. “I  _did_ make mistakes, and if this is my way of atoning, I don’t see why you care.”  
  
Draco let his eyes narrow at that. “What if I say that I don’t much fancy the idea of having a lover who has a shady reputation, either? If I’m to get back on my feet and do something else after I’ve served my six months, I would like someone who actually manages to enjoy some favorable press and can use his contacts to my  _advantage_.”  
  
Potter turned pale. Then he turned red. Then he coughed. “L-lover?”  
  
“Of course,” said Draco. “I fully expect the cooperation we’re going through to build a new sort of alliance.” For a moment, he took Potter’s hand, and squeezed it fiercely. Then he added, “It’s not the conventional way to build a relationship, but I don’t think either of us are the most conventional people.”  
  
For a second, Potter searched his eyes. Then he said, “Do something different? Really?”  
  
“I’ll be showing you all my best hiding places,” said Draco, with a shrug. “There’s not much point in continuing to be a thief after that. I think—yes, I think I’ll need a new way to show off my cleverness.” He paused for the exactly right length of time, then added, “Perhaps acting? I know someone who could give me lessons.”  
  
Potter’s eyes lit again, that deep, blazing look, but this time, Draco understood what it meant.  
  
And when Harry leaned forwards and kissed him, Draco took Harry’s chin in one hand and his hair in the other, and tugged a little, and enjoyed Harry’s deep gasp and his shifting as he hadn’t enjoyed thievery in a long, long time.  
  
 **The End**.


End file.
